Mick Jagger

by Philip Norman

  Marianne was not with Mick (a telling detail about their life by that point) but down in the basement kitchen, talking to Christopher Gibbs. “On looking from the window,” her official statement would say, “I saw Mick being held by a lot of men. There was also a woman there. All the men were in plain clothes. I never heard anyone, but saw someone’s hand over Mick’s mouth . . . I assumed Mick was being attacked by thugs and ran from the kitchen up the stairs to the front door, which I opened. At this, Mick said ‘Shut the door, you silly twit, it’s the police.’ ”

  As with the Redlands bust, the police’s timing seemed suspiciously perfect, though no tip-off from the News of the World or any other scandal sheet was to be alleged this time. Rather, it looked as if a member of the Stones’ entourage had been bribed to set up Mick on his own doorstep. Suspicion later fell on the Stones’ driver, Tom Keylock, who had many contacts at Scotland Yard and was the only one who knew to the minute when the intended target would be leaving for the studio.

  The next day, Mick and Marianne appeared at Great Marlborough Street magistrates’ court, jointly charged with possession of a lump of cannabis weighing a quarter of a pound, to which they pleaded not guilty. Mick’s treatment, however, had none of the hysteria and overkill of 1967. The case was adjourned until June 23 and he was released on fifty pounds’ bail. That second hearing ended in a further adjournment and continued bail until September 29, which would allow him to go to Australia and appear in Ned Kelly in the meantime.

  Thirty-six years later, in 2005, a cache of hitherto confidential documents released by Britain’s Public Records Office was found to include the court papers from this second, and last, Jagger drug bust. Among them were claims by Mick that the police had planted “white powder” (i.e., heroin) at Cheyne Walk, and Detective Sergeant Constable had solicited a bribe for arranging—in a total turnaround of the Redlands episode—that Marianne should take the blame while he walked free.

  According to Mick’s statement, the find had been made in a cardboard box from Cartier, the jewelers. “I saw Constable pick up the box. I walked over to him, by which time he opened the box [and] pulled out a folded piece of white paper . . . He said ‘Ah, ah, we won’t have to look much further.’ He had a little while earlier been asking me where the LSD was . . . He showed me the paper and I saw that it contained some white powder . . . Constable licked one of his fingers and dipped it in the powder and tasted it. I did the same of my own volition. It had a talcum powder flavour . . . I would not know what heroin tastes like, but the flavour was not bitter.”

  DS Constable was then alleged to have said: “Don’t worry, Mick, we can sort it out . . . You plead not guilty and she [Marianne] pleads guilty.” He had asked Mick several times “How much is it worth to you?” and himself suggested a bribe of “a thousand,” adding, “You can have it back if it doesn’t work.” During the charging process at Chelsea Police Station, the police had applied further pressure, reminding him that another drug conviction would probably get him banned from America. On getting home late that night, he had immediately telephoned Michael Havers, his counsel in the Redlands trial, and asked Havers to defend him once again.

  In the end, the white powder did not figure in the case, and Mick was charged only with possession of the cannabis. After the second court hearing, on June 23, he claimed Detective Sergeant Constable privately said to him, “It’s not a quarter-pound piece any more, is it?”—implying that since the raid the police had sold or used some of it. Constable had allegedly hinted that another of his team had planted the cannabis at Cheyne Walk, but told Mick: “To know that will cost you a big drink [bribe].” Mick had suggested, “Drop a note through my door,” but the matter had gone no further. Signing the statement that same evening in his solicitor’s office, the autographing habit proved too strong and he added a cross for a kiss.

  He would ultimately be found guilty and fined £200, with 50 guineas’ costs—a very different outcome from his trial in the Summer of Love. The case also illustrated how much his social status had changed since then. Bowing to pressure from several of his friends in high places—including Michael Havers and Tom Driberg, MP—the police conducted an internal inquiry into his bribery allegations, headed by a senior Scotland Yard officer, Commander Robin Huntley. In Huntley’s adjudication, Mick was described as “a very intelligent, shrewd and well-known public figure with many influential friends”: different indeed from the “dirty,” “ugly” Rolling Stone of yore. By contrast, Marianne was clearly considered little more respectable than in the era of fur rugs and Mars bars, and her testimony was dismissed as irrelevant. Thus in the end it came down to Mick’s word against the “astute and experienced” Detective Sergeant Constable, and no further action was taken.

  AS THE LAST summer of the sixties got under way, it was common knowledge among London’s rock elite that the Rolling Stones were now actively seeking a replacement for Brian Jones. Hard though they had tried to hide their “wooden leg,” the still-unfinished Let It Bleed sessions made further pretense impossible—as well as reminding them afresh just what they had lost. In something like two months, Brian had managed to stagger into the studio only twice, to play percussion on “Midnight Rambler” and autoharp on “You Got the Silver.” The country-rock groove was continuing, helped by a clutch of top American session musicians like saxophonist Bobby Keys, pianist-organists Leon Russell and Al Kooper, and guitarist-mandolinist Ry Cooder. Time was, of course, when Brian could have played all those parts on his head.

  There were hopes that his exit could be stage-managed without undue personal trauma or giving offense to the Stones’ female fan following, the majority of whom still adored him. At the time, many star players were walking away from established bands to make more experimental music or join with stars from other bands in so-called supergroups. Brian himself seemed reconciled to leaving, and had several ideas for new projects both as a producer and performer. But in acknowledgment of his huge past contribution to the Stones—not least founding and naming them—he expected a substantial financial settlement.

  A far trickier issue was who should take over Brian’s official role of lead guitarist. It would be hard enough finding a player half as brilliant, let alone one who gave off the thrill of danger and mischief he had in his prime. And the Stones’ peculiar power structure made the job qualifications far from that simple. In most rock bands, especially since the male-skewed acid and heavy-metal era, the lead guitarist ranked second to the vocalist, if not equal first. But here, with rhythm-guitarist Keith unchallengeable in that place, he would have to accept subordinate status along with Bill and Charlie.

  The problem was finally solved by Marsha Hunt—or, rather, by John Mayall, the hard-core blues-band leader with whom Marsha had lived briefly before finding fame in Hair. She had kept up friendly relations with Mayall, and so knew that his Bluesbreakers currently featured a twenty-year-old guitar virtuoso named Mick Taylor, who was looking to move on. Marsha passed the news to Mick at one of their secret trysts, and Mick immediately summoned Taylor to an audition. With his unsmiling baby face and girlishly thick hair, the twenty-year-old looked nothing like anyone’s idea of a Rolling Stone—still less, anyone’s idea of a Mick. But his talent was undeniable, and more important, he struck up an instant playing rapport with Keith. After contributing riffs to two Let It Bleed tracks, “Live with Me” and “Country Honk,” he was asked to join by Mick for a wage of £150 per week.

  So, late in May, the moment arrived for officially giving Brian the boot. Since he rarely visited London anymore, the deed would have to be done at his new country house, Cotchford Farm, near Harefield in East Sussex. For a character so addicted to faux innocence, it was richly appropriate to be now living in the former home of A. A. Milne, surrounded by mementos of Milne’s famously befuddled bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and his companions Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger. Cotchford was originally to be a love nest shared with the Anita Pallenberg look-alike Suki Poitier, but
the previous Christmas Suki had finally tired of Brian’s violence and left him. In her place he had installed a twenty-three-year-old blond Swede named Anna Wohlin.

  He had stayed connected to the Stones’ office, still treating Shirley Arnold as his own PA without any objection from managing director Mick. Indeed, Mick remained full of concern for him, though characteristically preferring to conceal it. “Whenever Brian phoned,” Shirley remembers, “Mick was always the first one to ask, ‘How is he?’ ” The drug bust at Cheyne Walk had deepened this fellow feeling, for Detective Sergeant Robin Constable had also busted Brian a year earlier and then, too, drugs had come to light that the bustee swore he had never seen before. When news came through that Brian was back in the Priory for another drying-out session, Mick immediately arranged for flowers to be sent to him. Even the well-known Jagger parsimony was suspended in the matter of Brian’s golden handshake. “Mick recognized what a huge contribution Brian had made to the band,” Shirley says. “He wanted the payoff to be as generous as possible.”

  Harefield was only about an hour’s drive across Sussex from Redlands, and rather than take the coward’s way out and employ a third party—as the Beatles had when ditching their original drummer, Pete Best—Mick and Keith did the firing in person, taking along Charlie Watts in case a mediator should be needed. But the meeting passed off with none of Brian’s usual histrionics or hysteria. It was agreed that the press would be told he was leaving by amicable mutual consent, and he would receive a once-for-all payment of £100,000 (well over £1 million by modern values) in addition to the royalties still accruing to him from Stones recordings. When it was all over, Brian shook hands and wished them good-bye with old-fashioned courtesy: only when their Rolls had turned out of the front drive and disappeared did he run back into the house, lay his head on his kitchen table, and weep.

  The following day, a press release from Les Perrin’s office announced that Brian had left the Stones because of “musical differences,” describing it (in words that would prove somewhat unfortunate) as an “amicable termination.” A statement from Brian himself explained he had taken the decision because “I no longer saw eye to eye with the others over the discs we are cutting.” One from Mick added a persuasive note of personal warmth: “We have decided that it is best for him to be free to follow his own inclinations. We have parted on the best of terms. We continue to be friends and we’re certainly going to meet socially in future.”

  For London, the summer of 1969 brought a return of the sunshine that seemed to have saturated it throughout the decade. And on June 7, the predominantly sunny mood of its young was demonstrated as never before by a free rock concert in one of its cherished royal parks.

  The chosen space was Hyde Park, the 350 verdant acres bounded by Knightsbridge, Bayswater, and Mayfair, whose loudest sound as a rule was the splash of oars on the Serpentine lake or the soapbox orators at Speakers’ Corner. The license had been obtained by a new promotions company named Blackhill Enterprises; its star attraction was Blind Faith, the supergroup lately formed by Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, Steve Winwood from Traffic, and Rick Grech from Family. A stage was constructed on the wide plateau in the park’s northeast corner next to Marble Arch, and the spectators sat on the grass or in deck chairs, just yards from grinding traffic. The event attracted an audience of 150,000, by a long way the largest crowd ever formed in London since the end of the Second World War. Despite the competition for good vantage points and the extreme heat—in an era long before people carried their own bottled water—not a single case of violence or drunkenness was reported.

  Blind Faith had only recently come together, and their set—including a cover version of the Stones’ “Under My Thumb”—scarcely lived up to their hype. But the atmosphere of good humor and togetherness was like no festival’s since Monterey. In the VIP area, the show’s organizer-compere, Sam Cutler, bumped into Mick, wandering around with Marianne and Nicholas, clearly as enraptured as everyone else. That evening, Cutler went to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall and again encountered Mick, by this time free of Marianne and Nicholas and with Marsha Hunt at his side. He was in high spirits, having realized the perfect way to restart the Stones’ live performing career and introduce their new lead guitarist. They, too, would give a free concert in Hyde Park.

  As always when Mick made up his mind, events moved rapidly from then on. Blackhill Enterprises were brought in to organize the staging, with Sam Cutler as compere once again. Despite the prevailing atmosphere of hippie altruism, Cutler had to explain to Mick that putting on a free concert was just as expensive as putting on a commercial one. Mick’s neat solution was to sell the television rights to the Granada network, which would effectively underwrite the event in return for exclusive access to the Stones and himself, both on- and offstage.

  There was also input from Rock Scully, manager to San Francisco’s legendary Grateful Dead and a friend of Cutler’s, who happened to be passing through London. Scully talked enthusiastically of free festivals in California whose promoters used Hell’s Angels bikers to protect the electricity supply by parking their machines next to the generators, so giving the performers an effective but—Scully stressed—unaggressive security screen. Cutler remembers Mick saying he’d like to do a free show in California also, on the same lines.

  So the date of the Stones’ first live appearance in more than two years was set for July 5. Their alfresco rebirth in fact would take place only a few streets west of the Soho pubs and clubs where Brian Jones had first slapped them into life. That was the last thing on anyone’s mind until, with only two days to go, Brian was found dead in his swimming pool.

  HIS DEATH WOULD turn into the pop world’s most famous whodunit. Although an excellent swimmer, he had drowned in a few feet of water, within earshot of his girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, and several houseguests who could easily have come to his aid. Sudden, lonely, inexplicable deaths have been the fate of many other major rock figures; those of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were, indeed, soon to follow in quick succession. But Brian’s peculiar blend of brilliance and self-destructiveness—and the fact that the most decadent rock star of his time expired in a garden dedicated to Winnie-the-Pooh—has generated an unparalleled degree of fascination, speculation, and Kennedyesque conspiracy theory.

  The inquest found his drowning to have been “misadventure,” due to the level of drugs and alcohol in his system and his appalling physical shape for a man of only twenty-seven. But among investigative journalists and broadcasters, a suspicion still lingers that he was murdered and a cover-up inside the Stones’ camp prevented his killer or killers from being brought to justice. The motive most commonly suggested (albeit without a shred of hard evidence) is that, despite having left the band in seeming amicability, he still posed some threat or knew some dark secret about them which he was threatening to make public.

  In the countless articles and documentaries about the case that have appeared since 1969, the Stones have never been accused of direct involvement in either the alleged murder or conspiracy. They receive a large share of blame nonetheless for the seeming callousness with which they had fired him from the band he founded, so sending him off a metaphorical deep end well before he plunged from the real one. Mick is always portrayed as the most selfishly indifferent to his plight, stealing his leadership without a qualm, then, once he was gone, not sparing him a backward glance. As we have already seen and will now again in spades, all this could not be further from the truth.

  Brian’s final undoing seems not to have been drink or drugs but his pathetic need for friends, all the greater now that he was no longer a Rolling Stone. To carry out renovations at Cotchford Farm, he had hired a local builder named Frank Thorogood, a crony of the Stones’ driver, Tom Keylock, who had previously done some work for Keith at Redlands. The misnamed Thorogood took shameless advantage of the situation, dawdling over his construction work while sponging off Brian and living rent-free with a woman friend
in a flat above the garage.

  Twenty-six years after the event, Thorogood, by that time terminally ill with cancer, made a supposed deathbed confession to Keylock that he’d drowned Brian by accident during some drunken horseplay while they were temporarily alone together in the pool. But there remain puzzling aspects to the case, for instance precisely how many people were at Cotchford Farm at the time, and what happened to the large amount of Brian’s possessions and private papers that disappeared immediately afterward. The Sussex police’s investigation—using some of the same officers who busted Mick and Keith in 1967—was later revealed to have been seriously flawed, and there have been repeated calls for an official reexamination of the evidence, the most recent in 2010.

  When Brian died, at around midnight on July 2, the reconfigured Stones happened to be all together at Olympic Studios, working around the clock to finish off Let It Bleed. The news reached them between 2 and 3 A.M., in telephone calls from their assistant Shirley Arnold and their press officer, Les Perrin. The Olympic session was aborted, and the band went home, reconvening later at their Maddox Street office in a state of collective shock. Charlie Watts was weeping, while Mick—as Shirley remembers—wandered distractedly up and down, repeatedly kicking a dog’s water bowl on the floor.

  The immediate assumption was that the Hyde Park concert in two days’ time would be canceled. But after a chance remark by Charlie, another idea emerged. That afternoon, Mick gave an interview to the London Evening Standard and said the concert would go ahead, but now as a tribute to Brian. Afterward, he continued with the busy day as scheduled, premiering “Honky Tonk Women” on the BBC’s Top of the Pops show, then going on to a “white ball” at the country home of Prince Rupert Loewenstein, at which the guests included the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret.