Rolling Stones Thread

[eternal light]

[eternal light]

I have heard that this was an excellent show.

It rained on the second day but otherwise it was perfect.

We're going to do one for you.

This is a Ray Charles song.

Edited May 23, 2009 by eternal light

[Jahfin]

I recently acquired an official program from Mick's 1988 Japanese tour. It's packed with

full page color photos of the frontman in action. Mick gets directly involved in all the finer details of touring, to include merchandising, and more often than not it results in some

incredible souviners. This is certainly one of them.

Wasn't he originally an accountant (or planning on going into accounting) prior to being in the Rolling Stones?

[eternal light]

Wasn't he originally an accountant (or planning on going into accounting) prior to being in the Rolling Stones?

Mick Jagger majored in economics when he was in college.

[SteveAJones]

There are many stories about Jagger's business acumen, such as this exchange between Jagger and David Geffen:

Geffen found Mick at the hotel, nervously introduced himself, and told him he would like to book the Stones upcoming tour.

"What is it you really want?" Geffen asked.

"Well, we want to play smaller places for more money" Jagger told Geffen.

"Oh, terrific, "Geffen said, rolling his eyes. " How do you to propose to do that?"

Jagger told Geffen that they thought they could find a corporate sponsor such as Coca Cola to undewrite the tour. In exchange, the Stones would give Coke a plug from their stage during their concerts.

When Geffen told him he did not think that Coke would agree to sponsor such a controversial act such as the Stones, Jagger brushed him aside. "That's the trouble with you, Geffen - you're so negative!"

Note that conversation happened in 1971.

My favorite one is the conversation he had with Bill Graham in '81, who lost their North American tour to rival Michael Cohl. Bill pleaded with Mick to no avail as, despite many years of partnership, Mick took Cohl's offer. The difference? Just $2 million dollars.

Edited May 24, 2009 by SteveAJones

[SteveAJones]

Mick Jagger majored in economics when he was in college.

Yes, Mick did attend the London School of Economics, but only briefly.

Were you torn about the decision to drop out of school?

Mick: It was very, very difficult because my parents obviously didn't want me to do it. My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity. It was totally stupid. But I didn't really like being at college. It wasn't like it was Oxford and had been the most wonderful time of my life. It was really a dull, boring course I was stuck on.

[~tangerine~]

Robert Plant considered being an accountant, lol.

[Jahfin]

Considering the number of performers that have been taken to the cleaners over the years in regards to business dealings I'm sure Jagger's background in number crunching has come in handy on more than one occasion. As far as their commercial liaisons, they were doing

as far back as 1964.

[eternal light]

Yes, Mick did attend the London School of Economics, but only briefly.

Were you torn about the decision to drop out of school?

Mick: It was very, very difficult because my parents obviously didn't want me to do it. My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity. It was totally stupid. But I didn't really like being at college. It wasn't like it was Oxford and had been the most wonderful time of my life. It was really a dull, boring course I was stuck on.

Yeah, it was less than a year. He seems to have applied whatever he learned.

Academically successful, he attended Dartford Grammar School where he passed 3 A-levels, before entering the London School of Economics on a scholarship. As a student, Jagger frequented a London club called "The Firehouse". At the age of 19, Jagger began performing as a singer. Jagger had no formal musical training and did not know how to read music.

In the early 1950s Keith Richards and Mick Jagger (who as a youngster preferred to be known as "Mike") were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. Having lost contact with each other when they went to different schools at the age of 11, Richards and Jagger resumed their friendship in 1960 after a chance encounter and discovered that they had both developed a love for rhythm and blues music. They moved into a flat in Chelsea with a guitarist they had encountered named Brian Jones. While Richards and Jones were making plans to start their own rhythm and blues group, Jagger continued his business courses at the London School of Economics. Although he studied for a degree in accounting and finance, with a minor in physical education, he attended for less than a year and did not graduate, leaving instead to pursue a musical career.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Jagger

Edited May 24, 2009 by eternal light

[SteveAJones]

Altamont, May 2005

Obviously, Altamont gave it (Sympathy For The Devil) a whole other resonance.

Yeah, Altamont is much later than the song, isn't it? I know what you're saying, but I'm just stuck in my periods, because you were asking me what I was doing, and I was in my study in Chester Square.

After Altamont, did you shy away from performing that song?

Yeah, probably, for a bit.

It stigmatized the song in a way?

Yeah. Because it became so involved with [Altamont] — sort of journalistically and so on. There were other things going on with it apart from Altamont.

Was it the black-magic thing?

Yeah. And that's not really what I meant. My whole thing of this song was not black magic and all this silly nonsense — like Megadeth or whatever else came afterward. It was different than that. We had played around with that imagery before — which is "Satanic Majesties" — but it wasn't really put into words.

After the concert itself, when it became apparent that somebody got killed, how did you feel?

Well, awful. I mean, just awful. You feel a responsibility. How could it all have been so silly and wrong? But I didn't think of these things that you guys thought of, you in the press: this great loss of innocence, this cathartic end of the era.... I didn't think of any of that. That particular burden didn't weigh on my mind. It was more how awful it was to have had this experience and how awful it was for someone to get killed and how sad it was for his family and how dreadfully the Hell's Angels behaved.

Did it cause you to back off that kind of satanic imagery?

The satanic-imagery stuff was very overplayed [by journalists]. We didn't want to really go down that road. And I felt that song was enough. You didn't want to make a career out of it. But bands did that — Jimmy Page, for instance.

Big Aleister Crowley...

I knew lots of people that were into Aleister Crowley. What I'm saying is, it wasn't what I meant by the song "Sympathy for the Devil." If you read it, it's not about black magic, per se.

'Jagger Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interview' by Jann Wenner Dec 14, 1995

Edited May 24, 2009 by SteveAJones

[eternal light]

Big Aleister Crowley...

I knew lots of people that were into Aleister Crowley. What I'm saying is, it wasn't what I meant by the song "Sympathy for the Devil." If you read it, it's not about black magic, per se.

'Jagger Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interview' by Jann Wenner Dec 14, 1995

Sympathy for the Devil is mostly about bridging the gap between heaven and earth, paying the devil his due so to speak.

[SteveAJones]

Rock of Ages

Mick Jagger tells Simon Hattenstone about the names he got called when he was at school, how he is struggling to put on weight and - of course - being great in bed. Just don't ask him to explain his songs

Simon Hattenstone The Guardian, Friday 9 September 2005

Like so many boys who don't want to grow up, Mick Jagger still has his gang around him. The Rolling Stones, 43 years on, have just embarked on another mammoth 18-month world tour, and released their first studio album in eight years.

The Stones might have done little in that time, but it has not been without incident for Jagger. Mr Rock'n'Roll has become Sir Rock'n'Roll, made another solo album, become a film producer, been divorced by Jerry Hall (the mother of four of his seven children), contested a paternity suit from Brazilian model Luciana Morad before embracing his son Lucas, and enjoyed the company of numerous models young enough to be his grandchildren and tall enough to turn him into a wizened old man.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Stones made some of the greatest albums ever: Beggar's Banquet, Sticky Fingers, Let it Bleed, Exile on Main Street. Their blend of hard rock, country, blues, and balladry, of priapic posturing and shocking tenderness, remains unique. But it has been the best part of a quarter of a century since the last decent Stones album. Sure, the band could still tour and clock up record box offices every time, but they were dinosaurs, the Strolling Bones, a circus act, trading off their back catalogue and collective nostalgia. They had no new songs worthy of their name.

Until now. The new album, A Bigger Bang is a pretty good record, and a couple of the songs could become mini-classics. Surprisingly, Jagger, who has spent a lifetime shying away from the personal, has made an album verging on the confessional.

He looks amazing these days. His face is more rock than human - lined with great vertical cracks like so much erosion. At the same time, it is remarkably unchanged - those exaggerated features, the leering sensuality, that pornographic beauty. We meet in a Toronto school where the Stones are busy rehearsing for their tour.

He pours me a glass of wine and talks about the cricket, one of his great loves. As he does so I can't help staring at his body. He is so skinny. His waist is tiny. There is something miraculous about it - a testament to his drive, his obsessive workouts, his ego. We could be back in 1964, him singing The Last Time on Ready Steady Go, jiggling hips and lips, louche and provocative in a way no Englishman had been before.

But there is also something Dorian Gray about the waist. Jagger is still vain enough to wear the tight, too-short T-shirt that shows off a tummy a teenage anorexic would be proud of. Over it he wears an open shirt. On the side of a sofa is a hat, a white straw boater. Another persona. When not playing the legendary sex thimble or ageing roué, he enjoys approximating the English aristocrat. Bill Wyman, the former Stones bass player, once called him "a nice bunch of blokes". Over the years, Keith Richards has called him plenty worse: selfish, greedy, mean, shallow and, just recently (and apparently much to Jagger's annoyance), modestly endowed. They are a temperamental odd couple, loving, catfighting, forever on the brink of divorce, but destined to see it through to the bitter end.

I ask Jagger if he thought he and Richards would be able to write together again after all the bad blood. "Yeah, absolutely," he says. "It's all about having the songs." In the main, Jagger and Richards wrote the new songs separately and came together to refine them. Because Charlie Watts (the only other original band member) was recovering from cancer, it meant that for the first couple of weeks of recording, the Stones were reduced to Jagger and Richards. "Keith played the bass, I played the keyboards and bass and drums. So we had a lot of fun just being two people in a band. I think that added to the feeling of togetherness of it all. And we knew the songs pretty much inside out before Charlie got there." The Stones are a four-piece these days, but Jagger doesn't even mention Ronnie Wood, whom he seems to regard as a hired hand.

"The actual creative process was enjoyable, and creative processes aren't always enjoyable." Blimey, you can say that again, I say, encouraging him to tell his myriad wild stories. Silence. After all, plenty of your creative processes have sounded hellish, I continue. Silence. Like in the 1980s, I cajole. What I want to say is: "Like in the 1980s when, so the rumour goes, Keith wanted to kill you and Charlie almost did" - but I can't. There is something controlling about Jagger, something quietly intimidating. He is polite and friendly, he laughs and joshes, but I am also aware of how aware he is that this is business. "Ah, the 1980s," he says, as if struggling to remember. "Yeah, it wasn't very good, the 80s, in some ways . . . the end of the 80s was hugely successful, though."

So how's he getting on with Richards these days? "We seem to be getting on pretty good. For the past year anyway. Keith and I get on a lot of the time very, very well. Of course, we don't agree all the time. I don't agree with Charlie all the time." Indeed, he doesn't. There was the time when, according to Watts, Jagger called him in the middle of the night, said "Where's my drummer then?" and told him he was ready to record. Watts got out of bed, dressed himself - immaculate as ever, suit, tie, ironed shirt - walked downstairs to meet Jagger, pulled back his arm, swung his fist, and laid him out. "Don't you ever call me your drummer," he said. "You are my singer." I'm waiting for these great stories, but they don't come. Jagger is a rock'n'roll diplomat, an anecdote-free zone.

Why has it been seven years since the last studio album? His answer provides a fascinating insight into Rolling Stones Ltd. Whereas other bands tour to promote an album, he explains that they make an album to promote a tour. At the time of their last tour, they were advised to bring out another compilation album because it would make more money. "Everyone thought it would sell a lot of records and we were going, fuck, yeah, we might as well."

I tell him that what I like about this album, what makes it different, is that it's so personal. I expect him to say that is rubbish, that I'm reading all sorts of things into them that weren't intended. But he doesn't. "Yeah, it is personal, a lot of it. . ." He quickly covers his tracks. "Of course, there's a lot of comedy in it as well. I tried to make the rock songs quite comedic."

Look, I say, if you strip away a few songs, you've basically got the story of your life. The album could easily be turned into Jagger: the Musical. The album is about an older man looking back on his libidinous life and totting up the cost as he is left alone. He's right, there is plenty of humour, and the album is all the more personal for it. In songs such as Oh No Not You Again, and She Saw Me Coming, just as he's about to put his life in order, he glimpses another chick and is off on the chase again. He portrays himself as a victim of temptresses rather than a man who fails to take responsibility for his actions.

At the core of the album, though, is an overwhelming and specific melancholy. In The Biggest Mistake, he sings: "Acted unkind, took her for granted, played with her mind, she didn't deserve it, I left it too late, I walked out the door and left her to her fate." In the most self-lacerating and despairing song, Laugh, I Nearly Died, Jagger heaves with existential nausea. "I've been wandering, feeling all alone, I lost my direction, and I lost my home. I'm so sick and tired, now I'm on the slide. Feel so despised. When you laugh - laugh? - I almost died." It fades out to a desperate chorus, calling for guidance.

This seems much more your album than Keith's, I say. "It wouldn't be kind or politic of me to say," he answers, which seems to be pretty close to an affirmative. I go through the lyrics with Jagger and present my case like a second-rate barrister. See, I say, isn't this the story of your life?

"The whole palle-tte," he says in that slightly mocking way, fellating each syllable as he goes. I'm not sure whether he is mocking me or himself. I'm not sure that he knows. He may do maudlin on the album, but he's not about to do it in person. "Yes," he says, "hopefully there's a lot of humour and not too much pathos, not too much self-pitying."

But there is plenty of regret here? He nods. "There is a lot of regret," he says. But he seems put out that people might want it contextualised in terms of his life. "I was talking to the guy from the LA Times yesterday and he was just banging on about Biggest Mistake and I was becoming very embarrassed about it, very English. He was saying it's a very personal thing, and I felt like saying, yeah, but at the end . . ." He becomes incoherent as he attempts to explain the relationship between his songs and life. "I mean, yes - [he snaps the word] - it is very personal. Erm. Why? Not all of it is, but there are songs that are very personal. I pointed this out to the guy: I said, if you're going to start doing this analysis, you've got to let me do the analysis as well."

Do it, I say - nothing would please me more. He mutters something about the writer never doing a good analysis of his own work.

I still can't take my eyes off his waist. "What size waist have you got?" I blurt out. "It's tiny."

"Twenty-eight," he says. "I'm trying to put weight on drinking Guinness. What's your waist?"

"Thirty-two," I say, giving myself the benefit of considerable doubt.

"That's not so different," he says.

"Four inches is massive."

"What's four inches between friends?" He laughs, deep and dirty. He's happier swapping double-entendres than emotional truths.

How much do you weigh?

"Ten stone. I'm trying to put on weight."

Really?

"Yes, I'm trying to put on two pounds. That's my ambition."

What does he eat? "Everything. But I really am trying to put on two more pounds," he repeats. "But I've been doing so much working out, and all that dancing."

Jagger grew up in suburban south London. He studied at the LSE before becoming a rock star. His father, Joe, was a PE teacher turned college lecturer, his mother, Eva, a housewife. His father is now 93, and is still a huge influence on his life. Jagger says he taught him how to apply himself, and how to distribute his energies best.

Is his dad like him? "No. He worked a lot harder than I do. But I think people did in those days. I don't think they got time off." He seems hazy on the details of normal working life.

I ask him what his knighthood means to him. "Not much. My father was very proud. I felt very good for him." But I'm sure it pleased Jagger just as much as his dad. These days, he is seen at the polo and the cricket, mingling with society friends.

How come he is the only Stone with a knighthood? "Yes. They - should - all - have - one." He answers as if by rote, like a sarcastic schoolboy. "Wouldn't that be lov-ely?"

Did he ever consider himself to be a rebel, or was he just selling an image to the public? He thinks hard before answering. Yes, of course, he was a well-brought-up boy; yes, he was slumming it for our benefit; but at the same time he really was kicking against the pricks. "Before we got famous, we were rebellious on our own minor level because we were very frustrated because we were playing all this blues music and nobody wanted it. So we went fuck you and your fucking old jazz, because it was a terrible music scene with all these old farts playing clarinets. . . The record companies were ghastly Dickensian organisations. Nobody knew what they were doing. And they didn't want to pay you, so we were very rebellious against that, and the rest of it just came naturally after that. So it wasn't such a leap into doing it on camera, so to speak."

The Stones were certainly exploited early on. It has often been said that this accounts for Jagger's later financial acumen (or meanness, depending on your perspective). The tales of parsimony are legion. Bianca Jagger claimed that they lived out of a suitcase to avoid paying income tax; when Jerry Hall demanded a £30m divorce settlement, he argued that their marriage was invalid as they had failed to lodge the required documents and eventually agreed to pay her £7m out of his estimated £190m fortune. He made the Stones pull out of dates in England on their last tour because the tax laws had changed to their disadvantage. Jagger has never been a popular man or easy to like. But to expect him to be so would be perverse; his appeal was always his arrogance, his carnality, his apparent cruelty. For a while, in the 1960s, he even projected himself as a contemporary Satan.

When I was growing up I felt a bond with Mick Jagger. I didn't have his money or his talent or his looks, but I did have big lips. I was ridiculed at school, but when I came home I was happy to do my Jagger impressions in the bedroom mirror. Did he have the piss taken out of his lips? "Yeah of course."

What did they call him at school? "Many things. Heheh."

Go on, you can be politically incorrect with me, I say. "Well, no, I'm not gonna be. No, they used to call me the n-word . . . My father used to apologise to me for giving them to me. I'd inherited them from his side of the family." I tell him his lips don't look as thick as they used to, and ask if they are receding. "That's what happens to you when you get older. My son has a very big mouth, too."

It's funny how so many people try to thicken their lips these days, I say. "Yeah! With collagen!" he laughs triumphantly.

I return to the album, quoting more of his lyrics back at him. On the single Streets of Love, he sings: "The awful truth is awful sad, I must admit I was awful bad." Is this his mea culpa, his grand apology to all the women he's screwed over? "Nooooah! Haha!"

But plenty of women have said that as a lover and a husband, he left a lot to be desired. My question comes out wrong - I mean that he has not been the most stalwart partner, not that he is a poor lover (though Marianne Faithfull always insisted that Richards was better in bed). His response is instant - petulant and hurt. "Yeah, I've had others say how greeeeaaaat I was, don't forget."

He seems to be getting impatient. He tells me of a journalist who visited him the other day and blurted out: "So tell me, how many times have you been in love?" He makes it sound like the maddest question in the world. But there is a reason he was asked it: a while ago, he was asked a similar question, and he replied, "I've never been deeply, madly in love. I'm just not an emotional person." It seemed a desperately sad answer.

You know what I think people will ask when they hear the album, I say. "Yeah?" he says with a rush of enthusiasm.

Is the album your way of asking Jerry to get back with you?"

He looks shocked.

"Ah well, that's not the message intended," he says tersely.

Does he think he's going to have to go around telling people that things are not really so bad, he's not that lonely, he's doing OK? He looks worried. "Well, you're the first person that's talked to me about it. Everyone else has talked about guitar parts and things . . . You want people to have empathy - not with you, but you want them to resonate, and think, 'That could be me.' Like if you go and watch a movie, you put yourself in the position of the hero. So, as a writer, you don't want them to think about you, they're supposed to be thinking about themselves."

Often the two go together, I say. "Yeah," he concedes reluctantly.

The press officer walks in to announce there are only five minutes left. Jagger looks relieved. "It's getting a bit Woman's Own," he says to her.

Is he surprised that the Stones are still a working band? "Yeah, kind of, but I've got used to it." It is amazing that so many of you have survived to tell the tale, I say. "A-ma-zing!" he says in his mocking schoolboy voice.

Which of the dead rockers does he miss most?

"I think John Lennon I miss the most. I was pretty friendly with him. He was talented and funny, and acerbic and to the point. Yeah, I miss him most."

I ask him what he feels when he looks at footage of his younger self. Was he really as cocky . . .

". . . as it looks?" He grins. "Yes."

Did he not have any doubts? "No," he says. "You have a lot of self-doubt when you're in your teens, then it sort of goes away."

And what about now? Is he as sure of himself today as he was back then? "Pretty much so. . ." he says before trailing off.

· A Bigger Bang is out now on Virgin

[SteveAJones]

Inside the Rolling Stones Inc.

By Andy Serwer REPORTER ASSOCIATES Julia Boorstin and Ann Harrington

September 30, 2002

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Mick Jagger is wearing a cool pink shirt, slim black trousers, and bright red socks. His hair is--well, there's a lot of it. But don't let the look fool you. Mick is all business. That's business with a capital "B," as in the stuff we write about all the time in the pages of FORTUNE.

I'm up in Jagger's suite in Boston's Four Seasons hotel just before the Stones kick off their worldwide Licks tour. Mick turns down the volume on a boom box, packs off two of his young kids with their nannies, and then holds forth on product pricing, economics, and business models. Jagger is eloquent and informed, but he has a disclaimer: "I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson," he says as he leans back on the couch. "I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way. I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, kind of, but how boring is that?" he says with a grin.

Like the protagonist in one of his most devilish songs, Mick has been around for many a long year. He had plenty of smarts to begin with, and now he has 40 years of music industry experience under his belt. Jagger may be getting a trifle old to rock & roll--he'll turn 60 next July--but from a business perspective he's at the top of his game. Which makes sense in a way. After all, that's a typical age for a CEO of a large, multinational organization. (Okay, so most of the CEOs we follow don't have to swivel-hip their way through "Midnight Rambler," but you get the point.)

There are, of course, plenty of detractors who say the Rolling Stones should pack in their guitars and drumsticks. "Way old," they sniff, "and way irrelevant." I have two responses, one subjective and one objective. Subjectively, the Rolling Stones sound pretty damn good, even after all these years. And objectively, if they're such has-beens, then how do you explain the band's phenomenal commercial success over the past decade? No, they aren't writing groundbreaking songs anymore--in fact they haven't really recorded any new material of note in 20 years--but we sure are listening to their old stuff. A lot. And buying concert tickets. Millions and millions of them. And that's the wrinkle here. Even though the Stones have been in what you might call a creatively fallow period, we want to hear them more than ever. Couple that with the fact that they have perfected their business model, and it's easy to understand why they are such an astounding moneymaking machine.

The bottom line is this: "The only rock & roll band that matters," or "the greatest rock & roll band in the world," or whatever you want to call Mick, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood, they are far and away the most successful act in rock today. Since 1989 alone--the beginning of the modern age of the Rolling Stones (more on that later)--the band has generated more than $1.5 billion in gross revenues. That total includes sales of records, song rights, merchandising, sponsorship money, and touring (see chart on following pages). The Stones have made more money than U2, or Springsteen, or Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears, or the Who--or whoever.

Unlike some other groups, the Stones carry no Woodstock-esque, antibusiness baggage. The group has tendrils deep in American business, cutting sponsorship and rights deals with stalwarts like Anheuser-Busch, Microsoft, and Sprint. Remember the old Boston Consulting Group matrix of the four types of businesses? Well, if the Stones were a traditional company, they would be the cash cow.

As with most thriving enterprises, the Rolling Stones Inc. runs on a combustible mix of talent and intense labor--the product of four decades of trial and error. The band downplays the effectiveness of the organization: "I'm sure that if you looked at it and analyzed it, you could say, 'Well, that's fucked up,'" says Jagger. "That shouldn't be like that. No, of course it isn't run well. No show business organization is run well. There's always too much money paid out." Keith, for his part, just shakes his head: "It's a mom-and-pop operation," he laughs. "Mick is the mom, and I'm the pop, and then we have these offspring that need feeding." Well, kind of.

The Stones, or at least some members of the band, can still come across as wiggy rock stars. ("You're talking to the business right now," Richards tells me, holding up his two hands ceremoniously. "These are the business.") But in many respects the Rolling Stones are like any other large business. They are global, they pay taxes (grudgingly), and they litigate. The band has a P&L and budgets, and accountants, and lawyers, and bankers, and investments, and software, and hardware. "They know what they're doing," says Barry Diller, a Jagger confidant. "That's what separates them from any other band."

Spend time with their senior entourage and you quickly realize how the Stones got so market-wise. Sure, Mick attended the London School of Economics ("I mostly studied economic history"), but his greatest talent, besides strutting and singing, is his ability to surround himself and the rest of the band with a group of very able (they probably hate to be called this) executives.

The Rolling Stones are a private and secretive organization. Most of the team, like Joe Rascoff, the band's business manager, and tour director Michael Cohl, stay out of the public eye. So, too, does Prince Rupert Zu Loewenstein, a London-based banker who carries an old Bavarian title and who's been the band's chief business advisor for some 30 years--"and I hope for another 30 too," he says. (Keith calls Loewenstein "the mastermind of our setup.") But just because the Stones' financials aren't public doesn't mean there isn't rigorous benchmarking. "Mick likes to run a pretty tight ship," Keith says to me with a twinkle in his eye.

The business side of the Stones has several facets. As for any executive running a conglomerate, understanding and managing these diverse businesses are the key, says Jagger. "They all have income streams like any other company," he says. "They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock. That's my biggest problem." And as we will see, his biggest opportunity.

The touring side of the business produces a torrent of revenue when the band is on the road, and then of course absolutely zilch when the tour is done. The record business also blows hot and cold--depending on if a new album is released or if old ones are promoted--though it's not as erratic as touring. Music rights, on the other hand--money paid to a band when its songs are played on, say, the radio--are predictable enough that some artists (most famously David Bowie) have been able to securitize these rights and sell bonds backed by their revenue streams.

To harness these businesses, to make them "interlock," the Stones and Prince Rupert have set up a unique business structure, which looks roughly like this: At the top, not unlike at a blue-chip law firm, is a partnership consisting of the four core members of the group: Jagger, Richards, Watts, and Wood. Do all four get equal shares of touring and new-record sales? No one in the Stones party will touch that one. "In the old days they all got equal splits," says the Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, "but I doubt it now."

Connected to the Stones partnership and Prince Rupert is a group of companies that include Promotour, Promopub, Promotone, and Musidor, each dedicated to a particular aspect of the business. This family of companies is based in the Netherlands, which has tax advantages for foreign bands. When the group isn't touring, these companies employ only a few dozen employees. At the high-water mark of a tour, on the night the band is playing, say, Giants Stadium, the Stones may employ more than 350. Backstage the enterprise resembles a flourishing startup, with dozens of fast-moving junior employees in black T-shirts running around to make sure the IPO, er, the show, gets off without a hitch. It looks crazy, but it works. Perhaps Keith sums it up best: "With our business, who really knows what's what. You go and look at Lake Superior, and you say, 'Look at all that water, and that's just the top!'"

Today touring is professionalized, complete with immigration lawyers, traveling accountants, and real-time budgets. It is also the biggest moneymaking part of the Stones' operation. Since the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, the Stones have grossed over $1 billion on the road. Though exact profit margins are hard to come by, it's safe to say that tens of millions of that total flowed to each of the band members. It wasn't always this way. "When we first started out, there wasn't really any money in rock & roll," says Jagger. "There wasn't a touring industry; it didn't even exist. Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn't the act. Basically, even if you were very successful, you got paid nothing."

Jagger recalls that in the beginning, "you'd just jump from gig to gig. There'd be no sound or lights or anything." Gradually, beginning with the Stones' 1969 American tour--which ended with the debacle at Altamont--the touring business would become modernized, with traveling lights, sound, and stage. Jagger himself had a major hand in this, sometimes negotiating directly with promoters in various regions and countries. But it wasn't until the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, when Canadian rock promoter Michael Cohl took over managing the band's shows, that the Stones would begin to fully exploit the economic potential of this business.

Generally speaking, prior to Steel Wheels, the band would hire a tour director--the late Bill Graham of Fillmore West fame once filled this role--who would call local promoters in each city to set up shows. Individual deals would have to be cut with each promoter, who took, say, 10% to 15% of ticket sales after the cost of the show. The tour director would then have to collect $250,000 here, $400,000 there, from promoters all over.

Cohl, who started out as a self-described "drugged-out, late-teens strip-club owner from Ottawa," had been one of those local promoters. After a run-in with the volatile Graham in 1988, Cohl came up with an idea that he thought would tantalize the Stones, who at the time weren't on speaking terms with each other, never mind touring. "I knew the guys from Pink Floyd, who knew Prince Rupert, and I asked them if they would call Rupert for me," he tells me as the sounds of the Stones rehearsing "Street Fighting Man" echo backstage. "Ten minutes later Rupert was on my phone saying, 'Excuse me, young man'-- he talks in this very nice, formal British accent--'excuse me, I understand you have something to say to me.' And I said $40 million for 40 shows. He said, 'Very interesting.'"

The way Cohl's plan worked is that he would book the entire tour himself, dealing with the venues directly and cutting out the local promoters. He would also produce new streams of revenue by selling skyboxes, bus tours, and TV deals, and by taking merchandising to a new level. He would bring in corporate sponsors like Volkswagen and Tommy Hilfiger. And most important, he would help stitch these operations together, through cross-promotion and the like, to maximize their earning power.

After months of negotiations and a desperate, failed bid by Graham to retain the Stones, the band accepted Cohl's offer. Cohl even ended up signing on as the band's tour director. There was one small problem: "I didn't have $40 million," recalls Cohl with a grin. "I had sold half of my company to Labatts [the Canadian beer company], and the truth of the matter is when I offered Rupert the $40 million, I didn't have their permission to offer it either." Ultimately Cohl was able to come up with the money, and he and the Stones put together the tour. (Another wrinkle: Steel Wheels had to be insured--Lloyd's covered Stones tours--and before the insurer would issue a policy, the band had to take physicals. Keith passed, legend has it, to his own astonishment.)

"First and foremost, the show itself was the seminal, watershed point," says Cohl. "When you look at what a stadium show was pre-Steel Wheels, it was a bit of a scrim, and a big, wide, flat piece of lumber, and that was it. The band turned a stadium into a theater. It all started with Mick. He simply said, 'We have to fill the end space.' It was complicated to the third power and expensive to the fifth. But it worked."

It was also incredibly hairy. "I think Michael would admit that it was a huge learning curve for him doing Steel Wheels," says Jagger. "Michael had never done it before really, so it was a bit of a gamble." The tour began in August, and by October Cohl looked at the numbers and realized they were losing money. Gobs of it. The band and the organization had to cut costs quickly. "It was a deal where I said they could make a whole lot of money, and I would guarantee it 'subject to,' and the 'subject to's' made us partners at the end of the day. So we all had to learn how to do it," says Cohl. And they did.

In the end, the Steel Wheels tour--tickets, merchandising, sponsorship money from Anheuser-Busch--made over $260 million worldwide, then a record for a rock tour. The venues, Cohl, the band, and Labatts all made out bigtime. Steel Wheels became the template, and Cohl has been doing Stones tours ever since, refining the operation each time around.

On the new, E*Trade-sponsored Licks tour, the band, which includes keyboard whiz Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones, is playing three types of venues: stadiums, arenas, and small clubs, each with a unique set of songs (the band has rehearsed more than 130 for this tour), staging, and lights. "It is an amazing challenge," says Patrick Woodroffe, the lighting designer on the tour, who's jumped in a cab with me after the Boston show, "but it's great for the audiences and it keeps the band fresh." The props and set are downplayed a bit. The giant, multimillion-dollar videoscreen, the staging, and the lights that change for every song don't overwhelm but complement.

Because they are doing smaller venues, the Stones and Cohl know revenue from Licks won't approach the monster Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994-95, which brought in close to $370 million worldwide. Nor will it eclipse 1997-99's Bridges to Babylon/No Security tour, which did over $390 million. But merchandising (Jagger's and Charlie Watts's domain) will be more sophisticated than ever. Jagger tells me that there will be some 50 products--such as underwear by Britain's Agent Provocateur and new, expensive items like shirts, jackets, and, yes, dresses. And it will be "our most efficient tour ever," promises Rascoff, though he refuses to divulge any of the band's financials. "Doing fewer stadiums this time cuts costs because in previous tours we had to have three stages and three crews. This tour we have one stadium stage with one crew." In other words, when sales in your core business aren't maximized, you look to cut costs and boost tertiary revenues.

As usual, ticket prices ($50 to $350) have been the subject of much grousing in the press. But Jagger is happy to delve into the topic. "This is one element of the business thing that I try to really control as much as I can," he says. "Pricing a concert ticket is very different from pricing a Lexus or toothpaste. It's more like a sports event. And you are prepared to pay the market price. So if U2 or Madonna costs $100 (I'm making these up), you don't want to be charging $200. I try to keep ticket prices within the market price range. It's America. We're not living in a socialist society where we're all paid so low and no one can afford it."

The ticket-pricing controversy burns Cohl up. Athletes like Derek Jeter and Marshall Faulk are free to make whatever they can, "but people complain that Mick and Keith can't. I think that is the biggest load of crap. We are only charging $50 a night for club shows, which we lose money on. I read on eBay one of the tickets to Roseland Ballroom [in New York] went for $10,000. That makes us schmucks! When we charge $300 for some seats, somebody's out there selling them for $500. If we were to charge $500, somebody would sell them for more. Come on, what are they complaining about?" It's true that ticket prices to Stones shows have outpaced inflation (along with health care and college tuition), but you kind of get the feeling that the same people who are complaining about high ticket prices also rue the fact that Blind Boy Fuller died poor.

The Stones are famously tax-averse. I broach the subject with Keith in Camp X-Ray, as he calls his backstage lair. There is incense in the air and Ronnie Wood drifts in and out--it is, in other words, a perfect venue for such a discussion. "The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws," says Keith, Marlboro in one hand, vodka and juice in the other. "It's why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we'd be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don't want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out." No wonder Keith chooses to live not in London, or even New York City, but in Weston, Conn.

Of course, it wasn't just the taxman's pinch that forced the Rolling Stones to focus on the bottom line. They also got screwed by record labels. "In the early days you got paid absolutely nothing," recalls Jagger. "The only people who earned money were the Beatles because they sold so many records."

By the mid-'60s the Stones had reportedly sold ten million singles, including "Satisfaction," and five million albums, but the band was still living hand to mouth. "I'll never forget the deals I did in the '60s, which were just terrible," says Jagger. "You say, 'Oh, I'm a creative person, I won't worry about this.' But that just doesn't work. Because everyone would just steal every penny you've got."

In 1965 the band began to work with Allen Klein, a New York manager, who would help it negotiate a new contract. Klein, now 70, recalls his big day with the band some 37 years later: "I told the guys, 'I want you to come down with me to Decca. Wear dark sunglasses and look angry but don't say anything. Leave the talking to me.'" By intimidating the British record execs, Klein helped land the Stones their first million-dollar payday. Klein (whose company, ABKCO, still owns rights to the Stones' songs from the earliest days through 1971) and the band would have a falling-out and part ways in the early 1970s. With vintage photographs of the Stones covering his office walls, Klein leafs through the old contracts in his office and shakes his head: "The others didn't look at them that much, but I remember Mick would read every single page."

Interestingly, the Stones have never had a blockbuster album, like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours or Michael Jackson's Thriller. But what they have done is make 42 albums. And they've sold tens of millions of those records and CDs, and singles and EPs too. Since 1989 alone, for instance, the band has sold more than 38 million albums at roughly $12 each, for gross proceeds of over $460 million.

The new Stones albums haven't been as hot as the oldies, obviously, but the band has high hopes for the Forty Licks album, due out this fall. The album has 36 of the band's biggest hits, plus four new songs. Also, Allen Klein's ABKCO has just re-released 22 of the band's earlier albums on SACD hybrid, a new CD format (compatible with traditional CD players), including all of the band's great records from the 1960s. In a way, the Stones' older music is like Coke Classic. The band tries to introduce new varieties, some of which do okay, but it's the original stuff we still love the best.

SERWER: Your income must vary all over the place, year by year, because the tours give you this huge bump and then there's nothing.

RICHARDS: But there's always an awful lot of PRS coming in.

SERWER: What the hell is that?

RICHARDS: Performing rights. Every time it's played on the radio. I go to sleep and make money--let's put it that way.

Now this is the Microsoft part of the Stones' business empire. Profitable. Steady. And stretching out to the horizon. "Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording. It's just tradition," says Jagger. "There's no rhyme or reason. The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were. You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries--they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business. So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher. That's the model for writing."

And Jagger/Richards have written more than 200 songs. The pair has had a few monster hits like "Honky Tonk Woman," but more significantly they have dozens of songs that are played on FM radio, which is still a vibrant category. And it's not just the radio. Every time "Shattered" or "Jumping Jack Flash" is played anywhere around the globe when commerce is involved--at an ice-skating rink, on a jukebox, or at a club--the Jagger/Richards cash register goes ka-ching.

Again, Jagger is intimately involved in this business. Perhaps the most famous product rollout of all time used a Stones song--Windows 95 and "Start Me Up." Microsoft reportedly paid $4 million for those rights. ("Yeah, we met Bill Gates," says Jagger. "And [Paul] Allen is always around.") Not to be outdone, Apple used "She's a Rainbow" to launch the colored iMacs. But, says Jagger, "we don't really do a lot of commercials. I mean, I'm not against them per se, but we don't do them that much. We do a lot of film licensing. We get lots of requests, and I usually say yes. It's a great business. You have a sort of price that you like to keep to, unless it's a low-budget film and it's a really interesting film--then you can make a deal maybe." Though the cost of buying rights to use a Stones song in a film varies, on average it runs a filmmaker in the low six figures.

Over the past decade FORTUNE estimates that the songwriting team of Jagger/Richards has garnered $56 million from songs being played on radio and in public venues, as well as being used in advertising and movies. A significant chunk of change. "The thing that we all had to learn is what to do when the passion starts to generate money," says Richards. "You don't start to play your guitar thinking you're going to be running an organization that will maybe generate millions."

The tours, the records, the rights: They've all made the Stones the wealthiest rock & roll band on the planet. None more so than Jagger and Richards, who unlike the others enjoy the full fruits of all that licensing. Their portfolios are mostly in the hands of the trusty and tight-lipped Prince Rupert. Though Jagger follows the financial news in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, he isn't doing much with stocks these days. "I used to play the market, but I'm not that interested at the moment because I don't think it's a very interesting time," he says.

Keith is more philosophical: "I watch the [Dow] go up and down and wonder. It's like watching the horses really. How much is that an indication of anything? Oh, the Dow's up.... And you go, okay, who's running in the 3:30 at Belmont? I have a small portfolio. I find things I love, like houses--bricks and mortar. Nothing wrong with a bit of land. I've invested in my friends' projects. And there's Rupert. He is a great financial mind for the market. He plays that like I play guitar. He does things like a little oilwell. And currency--you know, Swiss francs in the morning, switch to marks in the afternoon, move to the yen, and by the end of the day, how many dollars? That's his financial genius, his wisdom. Little pieces of paper. As long as there's a smile on Rupert's face, I'm cool."

So what keeps the Stones going? Money, yes. But the band could make big bucks simply by doing commercials instead of touring. Going on the road is about ego gratification. "This whole thing runs on passion," says Richards. "Even though we don't talk about it much ourselves, it's almost a sort of quest or mission."

The Stones and their estates will continue licensing songs and selling records for years. But sooner rather than later, the touring will cease. Jagger's stage antics are remarkable when you consider his age. But how much longer? Charlie Watts, the oldest Stone, is already 61. The band hasn't said this is the last tour, though it could be--and of course that kind of speculation is great for ticket sales, particularly in second-tier cities, where this really could be the Stones' last show.

"How long can we go on?" asks Keith. "Forever. We'll let you know when we keel over." And when that day comes, it will mean not only the end of the world's greatest rock band but also a winding-down of one of the most successful enterprises this crazy business has ever known.

[Aquamarine]

Considering the number of performers that have been taken to the cleaners over the years in regards to business dealings I'm sure Jagger's background in number crunching has come in handy on more than one occasion. As far as their commercial liaisons, they were doing

as far back as 1964.

I remember that jingle vividly, and I remember arguing endlessly with my friends who would NOT believe that was the Stones.

Vindication came decades too late. :'(

[eternal light]

I ask Jagger if he thought he and Richards would be able to write together again after all the bad blood. "Yeah, absolutely," he says. "It's all about having the songs." In the main, Jagger and Richards wrote the new songs separately and came together to refine them. Because Charlie Watts (the only other original band member) was recovering from cancer, it meant that for the first couple of weeks of recording, the Stones were reduced to Jagger and Richards. "Keith played the bass, I played the keyboards and bass and drums. So we had a lot of fun just being two people in a band. I think that added to the feeling of togetherness of it all. And we knew the songs pretty much inside out before Charlie got there." The Stones are a four-piece these days, but Jagger doesn't even mention Ronnie Wood, whom he seems to regard as a hired hand.

Perhaps because Ronnie Wood was not one of the original members, which included Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, along with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts.

[SteveAJones]

The Rolling Stones - The Universal Remasted Re-releases

Official press release - April 2, 2009

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE ROLLING STONES

One of the most successful, prolific, thrilling and influential bands of all time release 14

re-mastered classic albums throughout 2009

2 April 2009 - Universal Music Group are pleased to announce the reissue of the Rolling Stones re-mastered, post-1971 studio albums into the market throughout 2009 starting in May. The Rolling Stones remain one of the most successful, prolific, thrilling and influential bands of all time, as evidenced on their recent A Bigger Bang tour, which broke all box office records, and in Shine A Light, the stunning concert film directed by Martin Scorsese. The release of the soundtrack from the critically-acclaimed movie marked the beginning of the band’s new relationship with Universal Music Group last year.

Starting with the legendary Sticky Fingers, Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll and Black And Blue in May 2009, right up to 2005’s triumphant A Bigger Bang to be reissued in July, along with Dirty Work, Steel Wheels, Voodoo Lounge and Bridges To Babylon, with such acknowledged classics as Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, Tattoo You and Undercover, due out again in June, fans will get a chance to rediscover many of their past favourites and unearth some forgotten gems along the way too …all re-mastered and sounding better than ever.

Max Hole, Executive VP, Universal Music Group International said, ‘The Rolling Stones redefined music. By making these iconic albums available again – and retaining the essence of the original track listings and sleeve design – we believe that music fans will rediscover just why they are the world’s greatest rock & roll band.’

The seventies was the decade when the Rolling Stones became known as the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band, a tag they thoroughly deserved and have yet to lose. They performed groundbreaking concerts in arenas and moved effortlessly into open-air stadiums. They stuck their collective tongue out at the British establishment and became citizens of the world. They made front page news wherever they went, from the French Riviera to Switzerland via the US and Canada. They set up their own label and made the most of their new-found artistic freedom. They were au fait with reggae years before many other rock bands, recording in Jamaica in 1972, and covering Eric Donaldson’s Cherry Oh Baby in 1975. And, most importantly, they issued a series of definitive studio albums, on a par with the best work they had produced at the end of the sixties.

Recorded at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, with the Rolling Stones mobile and at Olympic Studios in London, Sticky Fingers is an acknowledged masterpiece and rightly features on the list of Rolling Stone Magazine’s Greatest Albums Of All Time. It came housed in a controversial ‘zipper’ sleeve conceived by Andy Warhol – and topped the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic. The US number one single Brown Sugar has become the ultimate rock anthem but the riffy Bitch is just as intoxicating while the ballads Sister Morphine and Moonlight Mile are timeless classics . Sticky Fingers also provided rock fans with Can’t You Hear Me Knocking and Sway. The much-covered Wild Horses and Dead Flowers inaugurated a rich run of country-tinged material for the band. Keith Richards & Mick Jagger’s songwriting partnership had reached another level as this album was unveiled in 1971.

Originally issued in 1973, Goats Head Soup was another transatlantic chart-topper. Recording started at Byron Lee’s Dynamic Sound Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, in late 1972 and was completed in London and Los Angeles the following year. Packaged in another iconic sleeve shot by photographer David Bailey, it’s fondly remembered for the ballad Angie, a US number one, and the swear words on the raunchy closer Star Star. The ominous opener Dancing With Mr. D, the funky Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) and the gorgeous Winter have been a tad overshadowed by the rest of the group’s mighty canon and are well worth rediscovering.

Produced by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards under their Glimmer Twins guise, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll was another number one album in the US in 1974, and contains two hit singles, the title track and a great reworking of an old Motown favourite, The Temptations’ Ain’t Too Proud To Beg. Guy Peellaert’s fin de siècle sleeve beautifully captures the mood of the times. Mick Taylor ended his tenure with some wonderful guitar work on Time Waits For No One while his eventual replacement Ronnie Wood hosted the sessions for It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It), a concert favourite to this day.

The Rolling Stones went through the process of auditioning several guitarists, including Wayne Perkins and Harvey Mandel, who both guest on Black And Blue, the album which debuted at number one in the US in 1976. But Wood was always the favourite and duly joined Charlie Watts on the back of the gatefold sleeve. Recorded in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US, Black And Blue features the wonderful ballads Fool To Cry and Memory Motel and some top notch riffing on Hand Of Fate and Crazy Mama. The irresistibly funky Hot Stuff became a club hit, a sign of things to come for a formidable band equally at ease with blues, rock, country, reggae or dance.

The next two set of re-issues – Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, Tattoo You and Undercover in June, and Dirty Work, Steel Wheels, Voodoo Lounge, Bridges To Babylon and A Bigger Bang in July – will bring the story of the Rolling Stones right up to date.

They include further classic tracks like Miss You, Beast Of Burden, She’s So Cold, Start Me Up, Waiting On a Friend, Undercover Of The Night, the band’s cover of Bob & Earl’s Harlem Shuffle, Mixed Emotions, Rock And A Hard Place, Love Is Strong, You Got Me Rocking, Anybody Seen My Baby?, Saint Of Me, Rough Justice and Streets Of Love.

These albums will be re-mastered and all retain the original track listings and sleeve design.

Fans will have the option of purchasing a collector’s box in which to house all 14 studio albums. The catalogue will also be available digitally. The classic album Exile on Main Street will also be released later in 2009 by UMG as wider plans are being prepared to celebrate its release. Watch this space.

Meanwhile ………Ladies And Gentlemen, we give you - The Rolling Stones.

1st batch – 4 May

Sticky Fingers [2009 re-mastered] --- 2701562 / 06025 2701562 0

Goats Head Soup [2009 re-mastered] --- 2701560 / 06025 2701560 6

It's Only Rock 'N' Roll [2009 re-mastered] --- 2701559 / 06025 2701559 0

Black And Blue [2009 re-mastered ] --- 2701561 / 06025 2701561 3

2nd batch – 8 June

Some Girls

Emotional Rescue

Tattoo You

Undercover

3rd batch – 13 July

Dirty Work

Steel Wheels

Voodoo Lounge

Bridges To Babylon

A Bigger Bang

Please note:

Exile On Main Street will be released later this year, as part of wider plans for this title.

The first four studio albums…

Sticky Fingers

Tracklisting:

1. Brown Sugar

2. Sway

3. Wild Horses

4. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking

5. You Gotta Move

6. Bitch

7. I Got The Blues

8. Sister Morphine

9. Dead Flowers

10. Moonlight Mile

Goats Head Soup

Tracklisting:

1. Dancing With Mr D.

2. 100 Years

3. Coming Down Again

4. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)

5. Angie

6. Silver Train

7. Hide Your Love

8. Winter

9. Can You Hear The Music

10. Star Star

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll

Tracklisting:

1. If You can’t Rock me

2. Ain’t Too Proud To Beg

3. It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)

4. Till The Next Goodbye

5. Time Waits For No One

6. Luxury

7. Dance Little Sister

8. If You Really Want To Be My Friend

9. Short And Curlies

10. Fingerprint File

Black And Blue

Tracklisting:

1. Hot Stuff

2. Hand Of Fate

3. Cherry Oh Baby

4. Memory Motel

5. Hey Negrita

6. Melody

7. Fool To Cry

8. Crazy Mama

[eternal light]

Ronnie wasn't granted "full member" status until more than 25 yrs after he joined, but

I (and many others) happen to think he saved the band from self-destructing in the

'70s.

Speaking of the original Stones, Charlie Watts will be at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, London on Sat, 13 June 2009. Charlie is appearing with Ben Water, Axel Zwingenberger and special guests.

Charlie Watts also celebrates his 68th birthday on June 2nd.

[SteveAJones]

Events » Rhythm Kings Heritage Foundation concert

Saturday 20th June 2009

Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings are set to play at the high profile Heritage Foundation Annual Awards and Summer Ball in London on June 20, 2009.

The Heritage Foundation

Annual Awards and Summer Ball

Saturday June 20, 2009

The Millennium Hotel, Mayfair, London

As part of the entertainment, Robin Gibb will be performing live on the night and will be joined by a host of his friends, including Bill Wyman and The Rhythm Kings.

Full details of the event are available at www.theheritagefoundation.info

[Electrophile]

I love the Stones. They're one of those bands I listen to a lot in spurts. I'll listen to them for a while non-stop and then won't listen to them again months. I just started listening to Let It Bleed again for the first time since probably Christmas.

[eternal light]

She Said Yeah Mercy, Mercy Hitch Hike That's How Strong My Love Is...

[Zepaholic]

I love the Stones. They're one of those bands I listen to a lot in spurts. I'll listen to them for a while non-stop and then won't listen to them again months. I just started listening to Let It Bleed again for the first time since probably Christmas.

I'm the same way. Currently listening to Exile after not hearing it for a long time. It's a timeless masterpiece.

[eternal light]

You Can't Always Get What You Want 1969

[ally]

I'm the same way. Currently listening to Exile after not hearing it for a long time. It's a timeless masterpiece.

You two have just made my listening selection for me.

[Zepaholic]

You two have just made my listening selection for me.

Can't go wrong my friend.

Cheers.

[2bitnogoodjive]

Mercy Mercy, Stray Cat Blues, & No Expectations - Live Hyde Park 1969