At around 5 P.M., Detective Sergeant John Challen answered the telephone at West Sussex Regional Police Headquarters in Chichester, just six miles from West Wittering. A voice on the line informed him that a “riotous party” was going on at Redlands and drugs were being used. The informant, a man, declined to give his name and hung up before DC Challen could extract any further details.
Like most other regional forces, West Sussex did not have a dedicated drugs squad. Their nearest to a narcotics expert was Detective Sergeant Stanley Cudmore, who had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor and been given light office duties with the Crime Intelligence Unit while receiving hospital outpatient treatment. Detective Sergeant Cudmore had used the time to read up on the various illegal substances now said to be circulating; in the whole West Sussex Criminal Investigation Department, he was thus the only officer who could distinguish between LSD, heroin, cocaine, cannabis, and marijuana, and he knew what the ones that had a smell smelled like.
Redlands was already known by the police to belong to a Rolling Stone, though no breath of a complaint against Keith had ever been made before. Detective Sergeant Challen immediately contacted Chichester’s divisional commander, Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley, who, like most of his command at that somnolent winter Sunday hour in a low-crime rural area, was at home with his family. With commendable speed, Dineley mustered a task force numbering eighteen, both uniformed and plainclothes, including the invaluable Detective Sergeant Cudmore and three female officers for the searching of women suspects. It was the first drugs raid ever to have been mounted in West Sussex, and to mark its importance, on the direct orders of the chief constable, Thomas Williams, Dineley led it personally, wearing a chief inspector’s full-dress uniform with white-braided peaked cap and military-style cane.
Dineley’s hasty briefing gave little idea of what to expect at the “riotous party” or how to conduct this entirely new kind of operation. Another of the plainclothes officers involved, Detective Constable Don Rambridge, recalls that he and his colleagues were instructed simply to “grab one person each and hold on to them” until a methodical search could be organized. The force then packed into seven vehicles for a journey of some ten minutes. As they turned off the main Chichester road into the lane leading to Redlands, they passed George Harrison’s Mini, heading back toward London. According to rock folklore, the police did not dare bust a nationally sacred Beatle, so deliberately held back until George was safely out of the way. But neither DC Rambridge nor DS Challen heard his name mentioned prior to the raid or knew at the time that the car was his.
Unlike twenty-first-century rock-star hideaways, this one had no electric perimeter fence, speakerphone entry, or patrolling security guards with dogs. The occupants of Redlands did not hear the seven police vehicles draw up outside or notice anything amiss until a female detective’s face peered through the leaded window of the big, high-raftered living room, where they all happened to have gathered. Even then, she was thought to be just a Stones fan who, like many before, had got onto Keith’s property without difficulty and would be appeased by a friendly word and an autograph. It took thunderous knocking at the front door—rather than the routine forced entry of today’s armed, shrieking SWAT teams—to reveal Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley, resplendently uniformed and brandishing his search warrant.
If Mick and the others felt shock and disbelief at the surge of police officers, the raiders themselves were almost equally at a loss. Straightforward Sussex coppers whose usual beat was the seaside or Chichester Harbor, they had none of them ever been inside a rock star’s home before. Challen and Rambridge both recall being momentarily disoriented by the scene in Keith’s living room—the rubble of bottles, ashtrays, guitars, record albums, cassette tapes, flickering candles, and smoldering joss sticks, among which long-haired, long-robed figures of not instantly determinable gender reclined on outsize Moroccan floor cushions. Even Keith’s choice of paintwork to set off the old oak beams, not healthy-minded white or cream distemper but dark matte shades of purple, brown, and orange, struck the officers as incriminatingly “weird” (Rambridge) and “strange” (Challen).
And, as somewhat of an anticlimax, no riotous party was going on. After their strenuous country walk that afternoon, the weekenders’ only wish was to chill out. In what Christopher Gibbs would describe as “a scene of pure domesticity,” they had just been served a Moroccan buffet supper by Robert Fraser’s manservant and were settling down to watch a film on television (Pete Kelly’s Blues starring Jack Webb) while a Bob Dylan track played on the stereo.
One decorative detail above all mesmerized constable and chief inspector alike. On returning from the afternoon’s ramble, Marianne had gone upstairs for a bath and rather than put the same muddy clothes back on (and surprisingly lacking any alternative outfits), had rejoined the others swathed in a fur rug pulled from one of the beds. The straitlaced cops thus beheld a young woman attired like some pinup from Razzle or Tit-Bits magazine seated on a couch next to the young man they recognized as the most notorious in Britain. Detective Sergeant Cudmore “formed the impression”—as police jargon has it—that Mick was wearing makeup.
The Stones’ reputation for conduct beyond the pale had prepared the police for verbal abuse, if not physical violence, from the band’s two chief members when their sanctum was breached, especially if drugs were involved. Instead, to their surprise, Mick and Keith behaved with utter politeness and reasonableness. “They weren’t morons like we’d expected them to be,” Challen remembers. “Both very intelligent, very pleasant . . . nothing untoward about either of them.”
As instructed, each plainclothes officer collared an individual houseguest to search while the uniformed element guarded the exits. There was some initial confusion when woman detective constable Evelyn Fuller approached the King’s Road flower child Nicky Cramer, who also wore makeup as well as exotic silk pajamas, and mistook him for a female. Meanwhile, West Sussex Constabulary’s nearest approach to a sniffer dog, Detective Sergeant Cudmore, was inhaling the air around Marianne like seaside ozone for what he alone could recognize as the telltale odor of cannabis. While this was going on, Cudmore later attested, Marianne was in “a merry mood” and seemingly quite unconcerned by the heavy influx of strange men into the room. Indeed, her behavior was almost tantamount to obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty, as from time to time she would deliberately let her fur rug wrap slip down around her shoulders, showing “portions of her nude body.”
The exasperated Cudmore ordered one of the three female officers, Detective Constable Fuller, to take Marianne upstairs and search her in the privacy of one of the bedrooms. Since she had nothing on under the fur rug, this was self-evidently pointless, and as she climbed the open-plan staircase with the grim-faced policewoman, Marianne says, theatricality got the better of her. Stopping halfway, she turned to her audience below, let the rug fall, and in her best Sarah Bernhardt voice said ringingly, “Search me!” Detective Constable Challen was on the upper landing at the time but received only a rear view. Challen later testified that her words made Mick roar with laughter.
The first finds were made on Acid King David: a small tin box and an envelope containing what Cudmore recognized as cannabis, plus a “ball of brown substance” he could not identify. But a much more spectacular discovery seemed imminent. In plain view was the attaché case which Acid King David had used to transport his LSD to Redlands and which, despite its popularity, still contained an ample supply. Yet as the police executed their search warrant to the utmost, rummaging minutely through every cupboard and drawer, none of them seemed to notice the attaché case. After some time, it finally did catch the attention of a young detective constable, but as he bent to examine it, Acid King David shouted that it was full of unexposed photographic film which would spoil if subjected to light. The officer swallowed this unlikely tale without a murmur and made no attempt to open the case.
DS Challen, meanwhile, had searched an
upstairs bedroom, evidently Mick and Marianne’s, which, he remembers, had “little strings of colored bulbs, like Christmas lights, blazing away even though no one was there.” On the bed—minus its usual cover—he found the outfit Marianne had discarded: “some pink ostrich feathers, a pair of black velvet trousers, a white blouse, a black cloak, a large sombrero-type hat and a single ladies’ boot” (the other of which lay on the floor nearby). There was also a man’s jacket of an extravagant cut and in a shade of green velvet which, until recently, only a woman would have worn. Going through its pockets, Challen found a phial of four white tablets. They were the remains of the amphetamine uppers Marianne had bought from the disco deejay during the Mediterranean cruise at the start of her affair with Mick. At some point, she had slipped them into his jacket pocket, then had forgotten about them.
Challen took the garment downstairs and Mick identified it as his. Shown the four tablets, he said they had been prescribed for him by his doctor, whom he named as Dr. Dixon Firth of Wilton Crescent, Knightsbridge. What did he need them for? Challen asked. “To stay awake and work,” Mick replied.
Despite the resources expended on it and its dramatic staging, the raid ended with not one single arrest. Robert Fraser, a habitual heroin user, was found in possession of twenty-four heroin jacks but told DC Rambridge they were insulin tablets needed for a diabetic condition. For now, all that could be done was send half of the jacks for analysis by Scotland Yard’s laboratories in London, together with Mick’s alleged prescription, Acid King David’s tin box, envelope, and “ball of brown substance,” and two carved wooden pipes and a china pudding basin from the cottage which had aroused Detective Sergeant Cudmore’s suspicions. Keith was formally cautioned that if any of the confiscated items proved to contain illegal substances, he would face prosecution for allowing their use in his home. The police convoy then departed, leaving Acid King David’s attaché case still undisturbed in the middle of the living room.
There seemed little doubt that the raid’s main target had been Mick and that the News of the World was up to its well-known entrapment tricks. In the search for evidence to neutralize his libel action, the paper must have learned about the Redlands weekend, guessed that drug taking would feature, and tipped off the police. This in turn meant that—unless Mick had been bugged by techniques far beyond his hero, James Bond—one of the other houseguests had been a NoW informer. Since Fraser, Gibbs, and Michael Cooper were above suspicion and Mohammed the Moroccan had to be absolved on linguistic grounds, the only two possible suspects were Nicky Cramer and Acid King David. The list quickly shrank to one, thanks to the muscle with which the Stones now surrounded themselves. A heavy friend of Mick and Keith’s named David Litvinoff visited the inoffensive Cramer, accused him of being a traitor, and, with scientific precision, began beating him up. When he did not confess even after being battered to a pulp, he was pronounced in the clear.
That left Acid King David, whom the police had relieved of a small quantity of cannabis, but whose stash of acid had been so mysteriously ignored. But, alas, there was no opportunity of “doing a Nicky Cramer” on him. Straight after the raid, he had hitched a ride back to London with Robert Fraser and left Britain the same night.
His disappearance concentrated the others’ minds on how little had ever really been known about Acid King David before he entered Mick’s orbit. And with hindsight some things about him struck a distinctly odd note. Even the surname they’d known him by—Snyderman? Snidermann? Schneiderman?—now seemed suspiciously vague, if, indeed, it was genuine. Michael Cooper recalled a moment at Redlands when, searching through Acid King David’s luggage for hash, he’d noticed a passport in the name “David English.” Later, as the two chatted by themselves, the subject matter had unexpectedly segued from new LSD varieties into spying and espionage. Cooper remembered how the “upmarket flower child’s” manner had become serious, even menacing, “like he was into the James Bond thing, you know . . . the whole CIA bit.”
The following Sunday brought apparent conclusive proof of everyone’s suspicions. The News of the World splashed the raid exclusively on its front page, naming no names—since criminal charges had yet to be formally brought—but accurate in every detail: as a result of a police swoop on “a well-known pop star’s country home, one nationally-known star” had been found in possession of suspect pills, “bottles and an ashtray” had been seized, and as a result “two nationally-famous names” were likely to be charged with drug offenses. The paper even knew that a third “nationally-famous name” (George Harrison) had left the scene in the nick of time and that “a foreign national” (Acid King David) was being watched for at air- and seaports. Every line suggested a quid pro quo from the police for passing on such a prime piece of intelligence.
Even so, Mick looked to be facing the very smallest of narcotic raps. The tablets discovered in his jacket were not an illicitly compounded route to oblivion but a proprietary travel-sickness aid named Stenamina whose amphetamine content did not breach any European country’s drug laws but Britain’s. For such a technical offense, the worst penalty he should have expected was a fine. And if the Stenamina was a doctor’s prescription, as he had said, to help him stay awake and alert through nights of recording with the Stones, he would not be charged at all.
A few days after the raid, the officer who had found the tablets, Detective Constable John Challen, traveled up to London with Detective Sergeant Stan Cudmore to interview the alleged source of the prescription, Dr. Raymond Dixon Firth of Wilton Crescent, Knightsbridge. Dr. Firth had been Mick’s doctor since 1965 and was also a personal friend whose parties he sometimes attended. And what he had told Challen seemed to be true. According to Dr. Firth, Mick had telephoned “some time before February” saying he needed the Stenamina to help him cope with “a period of intense personal strain” (which the changeover from Chrissie to Marianne undoubtedly was). Dr. Firth said he could take the pills, so long as it was only in an emergency. In the doctor’s view, this verbal agreement had the same validity as any written prescription presented at a pharmacist’s counter.
If the tip-off about the Redlands gathering had come from the News of the World, none of the rank-and-file coppers involved in the raid was aware of it. John Challen, who’d answered the phone to the anonymous male caller, had no sense of talking to a journalist or of typewriters clattering in the background. And significantly, when rumors of the paper’s complicity began to circulate, Challen was ordered to check them out. After interviewing Dr. Dixon Firth, he and Detective Sergeant Cudmore went to the News of the World’s offices on Bouverie Street and asked an editorial executive whether the call had been made from there. They were told emphatically that it hadn’t.
THE CHARACTER WHO might have been expected to hog the limelight in the unfolding drama would in fact remain offstage and uncharacteristically silent. When Andrew Oldham learned of the raid, he left London before the press could reach him for comment and, in his own words, “went missing in California.” The first SOS call was to Allen Klein, who immediately flew from New York to coordinate Mick and Keith’s defense, avowing that “their problems are mine.”
Oldham’s detachment was a far cry from the onetime sixth Stone who used to pride himself on sharing every tribulation his boys went through. Mick in particular might reasonably have looked for help from that Svengali-PR brain which had done so much to create the predicament in which he now found himself. But over the past few months, and especially since the London Palladium incident, there had been a growing coolness between them. Everyone around the Stones noticed how Mick, that once-docile and malleable Trilby, no longer went to Oldham for guidance, but took decisions about both himself and the band on his own, then presented Svengali with a fait accompli.
Oldham, on his side, disapproved of Mick’s new upper-class social circle, blaming “the Robert Frasers and Anita Pallenbergs” for making the Stones’ internal politics and sexual tensions even more byzantine than when he himself had had
a hand in them. His response to the Redlands bust was not to revel in the headlines, the way the old Andrew Oldham would have done, but to berate the victims for their recklessness, effectively saying it served them right. According to the second volume of his memoirs, 2Stoned, he had another reason for his low profile during the next four eventful months: he was terrified of being next in line to be busted.
Oldham’s withdrawal from running the Stones day to day had in any case been happening by degrees for some time. In his place as their press and media spokesman, he had hired someone who at first sight seemed to confirm how depressingly corporate he now was. However, events were to prove the middle-aged, gray-suited Les Perrin an inspired choice. A PR of the old school, Perrin was liked and trusted equally by his clients and by journalists, whom he encouraged to telephone him at home at any hour of the day or night if need be. Utterly straight in every sense, he would turn out to be the best mouthpiece Mick and Keith could possibly have in their coming ordeal—as well as one of the few people ever able to keep Mick in order.
For a time it seemed as if the trouble might be bought off, the way trouble around the Stones often was. A fixer within their circle—variously identified as a drug-dealer friend of Keith’s named “Spanish” Tony Sanchez and a shyster lawyer friend of Oldham’s—claimed to have contacts in the Metropolitan Police who could arrange for the various substances confiscated at Redlands to be lost before they reached Scotland Yard’s laboratory for analysis. With only a small technical offense in prospect, and that conceivably avoidable through evidence from his doctor, Mick had no need to risk charges of bribing a police officer, conspiracy, or attempting to pervert the course of justice. He went along with the idea for the sake of Keith and Robert Fraser, both of whom had much more to lose when the Yard’s chemists got to work.
Mick Jagger Page 27