This 1967 Rolling Stones promotional film for “We Love You” reenacts the trial of Oscar Wilde with Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Marianne Faithfull standing in for Wilde, the Marquess of Queensbury and Lord Alfred Douglas. The fur rug is a not so sly reference to what the otherwise naked Faithfull was wearing at the time of the infamous Redlands drug bust, as described below in this except from the exhaustively detailed Rolling Stones entry on Wikipedia:

Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their recreational drug use. In early 1967 when News of the World ran a three-part feature entitled “Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You”. The series alleged LSD parties hosted by The Moody Blues and attended by top stars including The Who’s Pete Townshend and Cream’s Ginger Baker, and alleged admissions of drug use by leading pop musicians. The first article targeted Donovan (who was raided and charged soon after); the second installment (published on 5 February) targeted the Rolling Stones. A reporter who contributed to the story spent an evening at the exclusive London club Blaise’s, where a member of the Stones allegedly took several Benzedrine tablets, displayed a piece of hashish and invited his companions back to his flat for a “smoke”. The article claimed that this was Mick Jagger, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity—the reporter had in fact been eavesdropping on Brian Jones. On the night the article was published Jagger appeared on the Eamonn Andrews chat show and announced that he was filing a writ for libel against the paper.

A week later on Sunday 12 February, Sussex police, tipped off by the News of the World, who in turn were tipped off by Richards’ chauffeur, raided a party at Keith Richards’ home, Redlands. No arrests were made at the time but Jagger, Richards and their friend Robert Fraser (an art dealer) were subsequently charged with drugs offences. Richards said in 2003, “When we got busted at Redlands, it suddenly made us realise that this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun stopped. Up until then it had been as though London existed in a beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted.” On the treatment of the man responsible for the raid he later added: “As I heard it, he never walked the same again.”

In March, while awaiting the consequences of the police raid, Jagger, Richards and Jones took a short trip to Morocco, accompanied by Marianne Faithfull, Jones’ girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and other friends. During this trip the stormy relations between Jones and Pallenberg deteriorated to the point that Pallenberg left Morocco with Richards. Richards said later: “That was the final nail in the coffin with me and Brian. He’d never forgive me for that and I don’t blame him, but hell, shit happens.” Richards and Pallenberg would remain a couple for twelve years. Despite these complications, the Rolling Stones toured Europe in March and April 1967. The tour included the band’s first performances in Poland, Greece and Italy.

On 10 May 1967—the same day Jagger, Richards and Fraser were arraigned in connection with the Redlands charges—Brian Jones’ house was raided by police and he was arrested and charged with possession of cannabis. Three out of five Rolling Stones now faced criminal charges. Jagger and Richards were tried at the end of June. On 29 June Jagger was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for possession of four amphetamine tablets; Richards was found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and sentenced to one year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were imprisoned at that point, but were released on bail the next day pending appeal. The Times ran the famous editorial entitled “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” in which editor William Rees-Mogg was strongly critical of the sentencing, pointing out that Jagger had been treated far more harshly for a minor first offence than “any purely anonymous young man.”

While awaiting the appeal hearings, the band recorded a new single, “We Love You,” as a thank-you for the loyalty shown by their fans. It began with the sound of prison doors closing, and the accompanying music video included allusions to the trial of Oscar Wilde. On 31 July, the appeals court overturned Richards’ conviction, and Jagger’s sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge. Brian Jones’ trial took place in November 1967; in December, after appealing the original prison sentence, Jones was fined £1000, put on three years’ probation and ordered to seek professional help.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Simon Wells: The Great Rolling Stones Drug Bust

 
You don’t see lots of Rolling Stones TV performances from the Goats Head Soup album, but here are the boys doing “Silver Train” and “Dancing With Mr. D” on The Old Grey Whistle Test, along with quite a long Mick Jagger interview.

Originally telecast on October 2, 1973.
 

 
After the jump: A TV commercial for Goats Head Soup, complete with Wolfman Jack voice-over.

 
Reposting something from 2009 due to a new video being posted online of Robert Frank’s seldom-seen documentary about the Rolling Stones decadent 1972 US tour. Usually the minute this video gets posted, it gets shut down so enjoy it quick while you still can…

Hard to remember it now, but it was well into the 1980s before VCRs were commonplace in America life. I lived in lower Manhattan at the time and there were very few video rental stores there. The only ones I can recall are Kim’s Video (originally sharing space with a dry cleaner, then several locations, now down to one again) and the New Video mini-chain, now a DVD distributor.  By mid-decade the “tape trading underground” was starting to organize itself (aided by the then burgeoning zine scene) and an unlikely character named “Dan the Record Man” became a key node in that machinery.

“Dan the Record Man” was probably in his mid 50s when I met him, but he was in such terrible shape that he looked far older. He was a classic example of what eating SHITTY FOOD 24/7—in his case dirty water sauerkraut and mustard slathered hot dogs sold by street vendors outside of the Canal Street flea market where his stall was located—could do to a human body. My god did he just reek of poor health and future strokes and heart attacks, but he was a super cool old guy who had been a dancer on Hullabaloo and knew everything about music and had records so rare it made my head spin. Case in point he had copies of The Great Lost Kinks Album as well as the live Yardbirds LP and the novelty record “Stairway to Gilligan” both which Led Zeppelin’s lawyers had yanked off the market. Once he knew you were “cool”—he was really paranoid—he’d pull back the black curtains covering the top shelves in his overstuffed corner booth and show you the bootlegs (there were thousands) and the real treasure he had, the bootleg videos.

Dan had EVERYTHING you ever wanted or could ever want. And if he didn’t have it, he could get it for you (he scored Nancy Sinatra’s TV special for me as I recall). Tapes were $20 and he’d do trade if you had something really good, but in keeping with his Gollum-esque character, you had to have two really good things in order to get one of his really good things for free. Those were his rules and you could fuck the fuck off if you weren’t prepared to play by them. Old school record collectors out there will feel me when I say: you did play by his rules. Otherwise you were cut off from so much illicit bootleg goodness.

Every once in a while you could surprise Dan with something incredibly rare. At the time I knew Dan, I was working in a digital video studio that did Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film transfers. On one occasion, photographer Robert Frank booked time to make a film transfer from his little seen documentary of the Rolling Stones’ 1972 American Tour with the title Cocksucker Blues. The Stones had an injunction against Cocksucker Blues being screened (unless for charity) because, well, it was a fairly decadent and at times quite unflattering portrait of them, let’s just say. The staff were told that under no circumstances could we make our own copies of what Frank was coming in to transfer. Yeah right! So, uh, this friend of mine, yeah this friend of mine, made copy, a copy of which I then traded to Dan, for, as I recall, a live video of David Bowie’s “Heroes” tour from 1978 and Bowie’s “1980 Floor Show” performance from The Midnight Special. Whenever I saw a bootleg of Cocksucker Blues, I would always look to see if it was a generation or two (or ten) away from the one I traded to Dan. Over the decades, most of them were my copy’s progeny (I can tell by a warble in the opening credits) although this has changed in recent years as a far better version has surfaced on DVD and torrent sites.

In any case, my rambling anecdote about the VHS tape trading underground of the late 1980s is because I wanted you to know that the legendary Cocksucker Blues documentary has been posted once again by some kind soul for viewing on the Internet. My 25-year-old copy is NOT the parent of this version, which looks pretty good (Note: The film was shot on Super-8 film to begin with, so it’s never going to look much better than this. You can find torrents for a great looking DVD version all over the place).
 

Here are the Rolling Stones performing the title song to Cocksucker Blues

Via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk

 
Video filmed backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, from the Hampton Coliseum, Virginia, in 1981.

Alway wanted to know about the backstage antics???
Here’s your chance to be with the Stones before they go on stage.
I guess the routine of touring has gotten to the point of ...well this!
Warming the crowd before they go on is George Thorogood & the Destroyers, on stage in the background.

Your Backstage pass says “ALL ACCESS”.
Please follow through this door and onto your left!

Taken from the December 18 performance, this was broadcast as The World’s Greatest Rock’n'Roll Party on pay-per-view and in closed circuit cinemas - the first use of pay-per-view for a music event.

It’s interesting footage, inasmuch as it belies the backstage tales of excess most associated with the “World’s Greatest Rock’n'Roll” band.
 

 
With thanks to Vince Giracello
 

Click on image to see larger version
 
Fantastic new image from pop art propagandist Ron English. Behold “Status Faction”!

I love Ron English. In my eyes he can do no wrong. He always brings his “A” game and the guy is just so prolific!

Below, just for the hell of it, the Stones performing “Satisfaction” several lifetimes ago…
 

 
More Popaganda from Ron English via his official website.

Via Cherry Bombed

 
A YouTuber saw fit to offer a transcript of this amusingly incoherent live Rolling Stones performance from 1976 where Mick Jagger simply refuses to form real words with his mouth.

Name that tune:

“Yah Awa bo anna craw fah huh cay Anna ho alamo in a try ray Buh ah ray ah now yeah and fad is a gay Oh ray now, a jumpin jay flay sa gas gas gah. Ah wa lay bah a toodleh beedeh hay. Ah wa sko wid a strap rahda craws ma bah. Bahda oh ray now en fad is a gay. Buh oh ray now jumpin jah flah sa da ga ga geh “

What freaking made up slurry LANGUAGE is he singing in, anyway? What drugs is he on? I want some!
 

The final photo session of Brian Jones with The Rolling Stones.
 
There isn’t tons of footage of Brian Jones, founder of The Rolling Stones, speaking on camera, so this is a real treat. Usually it’s Mick Jagger who the reporters would direct the questions at (or Mick who would always answer, I suppose) but seldom have we seen Brian speak for such an extended period of time. (Mick must’ve been knackered?).

The interview took place in Montreal in 1965 and the interviewer wanted to know what the Stones thought of America. They tell him.
 

 
Via The Houndblog/Thank you Chris Campion!

 
Amazing and hilarious, especially the clip with the mother and child. Here are The Rolling Stones at their satanic peak doing promo clips for the 1969 ABC-TV show Music Scene. Wikipedia had this to say about this odd phenomenon:

Existing promos initially used to sell this show to ABC affiliates featured the improvisational group The Committee, which featured actor Howard Hesseman (then using the name Don Sturdy), as well as the Rolling Stones. The promos implied that the Stones would be appearing with some regularity on the program. However by the time The Music Scene went on the air, the Committee was nowhere to be seen and the Stones never appeared on the show.

 
This of course sent me scurrying about finding clips from the actual show. Richard previously posted this one of Sly and the Family Stone. Here are a few other great ones for your weekend viewing pleasure:
 
Three Dog Night doing Laura Nyro’s “Eli’s Coming.” Heavy Hollywood/ Satanic/ pre-Manson/ Rosemary’s Baby vibe going on here.

 
CSN&Y kicking out a potent “Down By The River.”

 
More clips after the jump…

 
Seen here looking like “a cross between a human blackened spoon and Count Dracula,” in the memorable words of Nick Kent, the human riff himself is interviewed on Australian television in 1973

Topics include “the Blues,” Satan, the then-unreleased Rock and Roll Circus TV special and he’s got a few well-chosen words for John Lennon. I thought this was an especially good Keith interview.
 

 
Holy shit is this revelatory. Wonderfully demonstrates how the Rolling Stones sound is more than just the sum of its parts, with the component tracks of one of their key songs, “Gimme Shelter,” from 1969’s Let it Bleed album.

The vocal harmonies of Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton are nothing short of astonishing, heard naked here. Clayton’s performance was one of the most significant contributions of a woman to a Stones number.  “Rape, murder; It’s just a shot away, It’s just a shot away…” Listen to what happens to her voice at about 2:30 to 3:00 minutes in. Fantastic! (Clayton’s great cover version of “Gimme Shelter” would enter the Billboard Top 100 charts the following year).
 

 
The separate tracks for bass, guitar, 2nd guitar and piano, and drums, too, after the jump…

 
Clean cut, All-American crooner Gene Pitney was a massive star in the 1960s—and remained popular in Europe—but he is all but forgotten today in the country of his birth. Pitney possessed one of the most distinctive male voices of the 60s, a high pitched, quavering vibrato that made his songs of unrequited love and losers promising to prove themselves to their women particularly moving.

Starting off as a songwriter—Pitney wrote “He’s a Rebel” for the Crystals and “Hello Mary Lou” for Rick Nelson—and recording engineer, Pitney racked up sixteen top forty hits. Along with but a small handful of American performers (Roy Orbison, Beach Boys, The Supremes) Gene Pitney not only survived the British invasion, but practically became an honorary member of it. In fact, Pitney played piano on the first Rolling Stones album. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reciprocated by gifting him with “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday,” a top ten hit in Britain.

By the 1970s, Pitney’s fortunes sagged in the US, but he was still about to play to packed houses in England and Italy. In 1989, Pitney scored a month-long British #1 with a duet of his “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” recorded with Marc Almond. The pair famously appeared on Terry Wogan’s program, Almond sporting black leather and Pitney, a white tux (Nick Cave also did a killer version of this song on his Kicking Against the Pricks covers album).

In 2002, Gene Pitney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died in Cardiff, Wales in 2006 after a performance there.
 

 
After the jump, several more seldom seen Gene Pitney clips!

 
I got an advance copy of Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones on Blu-ray yesterday from the publicist for Eagle Rock Ent. and I must say, it’s probably the best longform Rolling Stones performance on the market or that we’re ever likely to see.

Originally shot on the 1972 USA tour in support of the Exile on Main Street album, during four separate shows in Ft. Worth and Houston, Texas, the film was shown theatrically in midnight screenings throughout 1974. The “QuadraSound” four-channel magnetic soundtrack required a a 3300-watt sound system to be delivered on a truck to the cinema which was run by professional sound engineers who tailored the mix according to how big the venue was (and also how full the seats were). The releasing company, Dragon Aire Ltd. had four of these systems touring at once.

The 1972 North America tour was the Stones at the absolute pinnacle of their powers as live performers—as even Mick Jagger admits, they could be a pretty sloppy live band at times. Here, with a setlist culled from their best albums, (Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street) they really putt their shoulders into it, clearly full of piss and vinegar to spare . It’s just a great Rolling Stones performance, full stop. If you are a fan, this is exactly what you want.

This film hasn’t really been seen (except for an Australian VHS release that’s been widely bootlegged) in about three decades, so the experience of these performances hasn’t been devalued by constant repetition on Vh1 Classics. Aside from that, let’s not forget the presence of virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor (arguably the best musician ever to play in the band). And it sounds very, very good in the newly remastered 5:1 surround. (I’m a little less sold on the picture, which looks fine, but has that slightly jagged looking quality that always results from a 16mm film getting blown up to 35mm).

All in all, I’d say that if you are “so inclined” that this should be a definitive “buy,” fanboy. I didn’t feel that way about the recent Exile on Main Street reissue in the least, but this DVD, especially on Blu-ray, really can’t be beat.
 
Here’s a somewhat murky—but asskicking—clip of “Happy” from the film.
 

 
Tattoo You? More like “fuck you” if your names happen to be Ronnie, Charlie and Bill!

Business Insider asked former Windows head, Brad Silverberg how he and his team got the Rolling Stones song “Start Me Up” for use in the company’s marketing campaign for Windows 95. What transpired makes for a rather amusing tale:

The Stones are a Corporation, with Mick as CEO, Keith as COO. Their business happens to be music. Those two make decisions. The other band members are essentially employees.

The Stones had not licensed their music for TV commercials. Mick was reluctant to license the song to us because of “artistic purity.” But Keith apparently has a higher burn rate than Mick, or not as good as an investor. He told Mick he could use the money and ultimately convinced Mick to do the deal. At the same time, the Stones were at a low point in their career and looking to become relevant again, and Win 95 looked like it could be a big hit and give them a helpful association and visibility.

The final version of the song was delivered for the commercial. We noticed though that it was not the studio version, but rather a more recently recorded live version. We pushed back and got the familiar studio version. The reason we got the other version was some of the band members in the newer version were more recent, and Mick/Keith got much higher royalties for themselves from that version than the studio one. Nice try. But it was tense till the very end.

Via the essential Bob Lefsetz

 
Tying together a couple of DM memes, here is notorious chanteuse Claudine Longet doing an interesting thing by combining two John Lennon tunes to a predictably charming outcome. Rather chilling lyrically considering her conviction a few years later for misdemeanor negligent homicide. She didn’t mean to hurt you!
 

 
The Rolling Stones found the saga of Claudine…

 
I’ve been a Rolling Stones nut for practically my entire life, and have dozens and dozens of hours of Stones bootlegs, but for whatever reason this awesome live take of Lady Jane, performed during their fourth appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967, seems to have slipped right past me. YouTube has been very kind to Rolling Stones fans!

Dig Brian Jones on dulcimer as a cheeky Mick Jagger sings of being an Elizabethan-era kept man. After Jones died, they dropped this song from their stage repertoire. Lady Jane, taken from Aftermath, was a 2-sided single, sharing the A-side with Mother’s Little Helper. The Italian picture sleeve is seen above.