559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
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There's a big knock at the door, the clock, everybody's just sort of gliding down slowly from the whole day, sort of freaking about. Everyone has managed to find their way back to the house. TV is on with the sound off and the record player is on, strobe lights are flickering.

Mary Ann Faithfull has just decided that she wanted a bath and has wrapped herself up in a rug and is watching the books. Bang, bang, bang, this big knock at the door and I'll go to answer it. Oh look, there's lots of little ladies and gentlemen outside. He says, read this.

unmistakable tones there of Keith Richards, of course. And he was being interviewed in Rolling Stone on the 19th of August, 1971, about one of the most notorious episodes, really from the 1960s, one of the kind of iconic moments. And it is the evening of the 12th of February, 1967. The scene is Keith Richards' country house at Redlands in Sussex,

the man at the door is Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley of the West Sussex Constabulary and Dom

And Dominic, he's come basically to search the house and to arrest as many Rolling Stones as he possibly can, hasn't he? And make an example of them. Yes. So this is the queue for one of the most famous trials in post-war British history. It's a very funny story, sort of trashy comic, and it's a brilliant window, I think, to the cultural life of Britain in the late 1960s. So last time we looked at the rise of the Rolling Stones and the way they became folk devils in early 60s Britain. And today...

We're going to focus on the Rolling Stones in the last three years of the 60s. So we have the Redlands drugs case, a huge story at the time in Britain, front page news day after day.

We have the tragic fate of Brian Jones, who is set up as this sort of doomed protagonist last time. And we have probably the two most celebrated concerts the Rolling Stones ever gave. Two of the most celebrated rock concerts of all time, their appearance at Hyde Park and their appearance at the Altamont Raceway in 1969. There will be a lot of drugs. And perhaps surprisingly, given that this is an apparently trivial story about a rock band who are still in their mid-twenties, there'll be an awful lot of death. So,

So we're in February 1967, 1967, the summer of love of psychedelia. So not natural territory for the Stones, certainly as they promote themselves, one might argue. And this will be a bit of the context for the story you're about to tell, isn't it? So what's the broader political context? So the mood has changed since the early 60s. When we set up the Stones last time, we talked about the sort of affluent society, a lot of money sloshing around in 1963, 64. It's the end of 13 years of Toryism.

Harold Wilson's Labour government are now in office, but they have kind of got into trouble. They've been in for three years or so. They're in a bit of a mess economically. There's a growing sense of anxiety about the state of the nation and about kind of social and cultural change, I think. So the mood of the 60s, it's never one thing. It's kind of shifted.

For the Stones, life seems to be, superficially, it seems to be good. They've had six British number ones, four American number ones, very famous songs, Satisfaction, Get Off My Cloud, Paint It Black, and Ruby Tuesday. They've been to the United States three times, triumphant tours. They've been twice to Australia and New Zealand. They've been often to Europe. There is a slight sense, I think, by 1967, I think you're dead right,

that they are out of time, that their music has, you know, the sort of the blues-edged music with which they came to prominence in 1964 is no longer what people want in 1967. Yeah, what the kids are grieving are sitars. They want sitars. They want people laughing uncontrollably for no reason at the end of a track.

They want bits played backwards. Exactly. So there's a slight sense that the Stones are beginning to copy the... I mean, they've always been in the shadow of the Beatles, as we established last time, that they are becoming a little bit slavish to the Beatles. Their most recent album was Between the Buttons, which was released in January 1967. It's a little bit more sort of folky and a bit more psychedelic than their previous records. They are Tom.

Like so many blues musicians before them, they're at a crossroads. Now, they're also, of course, by this point, national celebrities and international celebrities. So in the last episode, we heard how they turned into kind of folk devils. Well, there's, I mean, literally a Faustian pact in that sense, isn't it? Yeah. That they have cast themselves as devils when, in fact, in all kinds of ways, they're not really devils.

You know, they like collecting cricket memorabilia. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're like war films. They're like 1950s war films and things like that. So particularly Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones have become names. They've made that sort of transition to becoming names that people who are not really interested in their music will automatically recognise. They'll be in the gossip columns. They will be mentioned as sort of shorthand for youth. And

And in a way that perhaps is no longer the case, would you say? Yeah, because there is a genuinely homogenous culture, national culture. And to some extent, I suppose, a Western international culture has emerged really recently.

I mean, I guess it existed in the form of Hollywood, but they could walk down the street in Chicago and they would be immediately recognized in a way that would not have been possible for a music hall singer in the 1890s or something. So they're always being mentioned, those three in particular, and media accounts are swinging London, 1965, 1966. They love nothing better than hanging around with old Etonian art dealers and aristocrats and things.

And their success. Now, you mentioned the house, Redlands. I think that's actually really important. Their success is symbolized above all by their houses. The British are famously obsessed with property. All of them by this point in the late 60s have bought country houses. So Mick Jagger has a place, a Victorian house called Stargroves in Hampshire.

Charlie Watts has a 16th century house called Peckham's with staff near Lewis. Brian Jones, a house that we'll be returning to, Cotchford Farm, Sussex, again, 16th century. Most famous owner was A.A. Milne. And has a swimming pool, of course. Bill Wyman has a tremendous house. He bought Gedding Hall in Suffolk, which had been built in 1480. And that came with the title Lord of the Manor of Gedding and Thornwood. I mean, the thing about this is it's interesting. They are...

kind of classier houses than the houses, say, the Beatles buy, apart from Paul, who lives in central London. Yes. They're more the kind of houses that working class people who've suddenly come into money would buy because they're not familiar with the world of what you would buy that people who hang out with old Etonians would have. Yeah, I get that's true. I mean, they've bought the houses that Victorian industrialists buy.

I mean, this is the house that you buy, I would say, when you've made an awful lot of money from ball bearings in 1840 and you want a country house and you want a ride to Hounds and you send your son to a public school and all of those things. The Stones are very, very keen on

So certainly Mick Jagger is extremely keen to embrace this lifestyle. But they're alert to history and to the kind of the cachet that a house would have because maybe someone who had formerly lived there

in a way that buying houses on an estate on a hill in Surrey, a gated community in Surrey, wouldn't have that kind of patina. These are not stockbrokers' houses. These are houses in which they can, if they want, entertain the daughter of a duke, as Mick Jagger very much loves to do. So Keith Richard's house, Redlands, is part of this kind of Sussex, Lutyens-esque, Edwardian, Tudor beams kind of stuff. So it's actually 16th century, isn't it? But it's got that...

You could imagine a murder mystery happening in the 1920s there. You could absolutely imagine that. Or you can imagine Henry James living there at the turn of the century or something of that ilk. Exactly. So the incongruity, I think, becomes an enormous part of this story.

So Redlands has been in Richards' possession for a couple of years. We'll talk a bit about the house later on. On the 11th of February, Saturday the 11th of February, the Stones had been working on their next album, The Disastrous, Their Satanic Majesties Request at the Olympic Sound Studios in London. And they finish up

And they all go their separate ways. And Jagger and Richards drive with a group of friends down into Sussex to Redlands. They're going to spend the weekend there. And it's a very, very late 60s sort of coterie that they have. So one woman, who's Marianne Faithfull, who's 20 years old, who had been well known now for three years. She's Mick Jagger's girlfriend. She'd made her kind of explosion onto the scene with the song As Tears Go By.

Lovely song written by Jagger and Richards. Kind of sexy posh. Sexy posh, exactly. Yes. And they've got a couple of old Etonian sort of art dealers with them, Robert Fraser and Christopher Gibbs. So Robert Fraser is called Groovy Bob, isn't he? Groovy Bob. And they have sort of various other hippies and kind of hangers-on who are called things like Acid King David and stuff like this. Camberwell Carrots all around. Exactly. So they go down there Saturday night. Sunday, as you described in your lovely reading...

They have been out kind of freaking about, as Keith calls it. But actually, they behave as people do behave on kind of weekends in the country. They've gone for some nice walks. They've taken photos of each other. They've gone on the beach. So it's not a bacchanal. That's the key thing. They have been smoking dope, but it's not absolutely not a bacchanal. It's actually just strolling around, chatting aimlessly. And then the police turn up at about 7.30. They've got the telly on. They're listening to records. Marianne Faith was having a bath.

And the reason the police turn up is they have had a tip-off from the News of the World newspaper, now defunct, but then a colossal, multi-million copy-selling newspaper that specialised in stories about vicars being caught in sex scandals. The News of the World had been tipped off, almost certainly from one of the hangers-on inside the house, that the Stones were there and there were a lot of drugs. The News of the World were very keen on this story because, in a sort of complicated irony,

They were already in conflict with Mick Jagger because they had falsely accused him of taking drugs openly in a London club earlier that year. What had actually happened is they'd got him mixed up with Brian Jones. Mick Jagger was outraged and was suing them for libel. And so the news of the world were desperate to get dirt on Mick Jagger. It is the kind of newspaper that bears a grudge. It does bear a grudge, exactly. So they tipped off the police.

The police had got a search warrant from a special sitting of magistrates in Chichester, and now they arrived, 18 uniformed policemen, men and women. And actually, you know what? The raid reflects very well on Britain, I think. Everybody is extremely polite. So Keith Richards, he opens the door to Chief Inspector Diley and his officers.

And he says, you know, I've only got one request. I brought these cushions from Morocco. They're very expensive. Can you please make sure you don't tread on them? And do they avoid treading on them? They do avoid treading on them. With their massive policeman's feet. And actually, this is not surprising because Keith Richards was very well regarded generally by his neighbours. They regarded him as a polite young man. Which he was. Yes, which he was.

So the police arrived and some of them had been, you know, golly, this is going to be an eye opener. And actually they're slightly taken aback because actually all the guests are doing and what listening to Bob Dylan records while getting ready to watch an old 1950s gangster film on TV. And the only woman there is Marianne faithful. She has been having this bath. So when they come in, she grabs this gigantic fur rug and wraps herself in it with

Which is unfortunate for her, isn't it? Because it enables an element of prurience to creep into the subsequent reporting. Salacious stories which are completely untrue, exactly. And actually, the policemen are not particularly shocked by this. PC Don Rambridge, who was later interviewed about this, gave what I think was a slightly ungallant interview, and I think untrue. He said, she wasn't anything to look at anyway. She was obviously a dropout type.

But I don't think, I mean, she clearly was very pretty. So this was very harsh of PC Rambridge. The thing that really shocked them actually was the incongruity of the stones in this house. PC Rambridge. It gave us a bit of a shock. From the outside, it's a beautiful house. Oldie, worldie, half-beamed. Then you go inside, it's decorated in mauves and blacks. All the beams painted like that. It turned out to be a real raver's place. It really hurt looking at the inside. I mean, that is 1967 summed up, isn't it? It's Sergeant Pepper. It's...

Edwardian, what is it? Lord Kitchener's Valet. Yeah, Lord Kitchener's Valet. Exactly. But psychedelic and groovy at the same time. Exactly. So I think Keith, he still owns the house. I don't believe it's still, I would be surprised if it's still painted mauve inside. I think, I imagine. Tastefully done now. Tastefully done now. I think there's, do you know what? It would amaze me if there aren't nautical prints. Right.

Or kind of even, dare I say, a battle map of Trafalgar or something like that. I think that would reflect very well on him. We know he loves all that stuff. So he's got a library. He's got a very well-furnished library, by all accounts. So the police, do they find the drugs they're looking for? The short answer is, in many ways, no. They're hoping for vast quantities of LSD and all this kind of thing, and they don't find it.

What they find are that there are some amphetamines in Mick Jagger's green velvet jacket. These are actually Marianne Faithfull's. And there's quite a lot of stuff owned by Groovy Bob, isn't there? Yes. So Mick says of these tablets, well, these are actually mine. They were given to me by my doctor. But it's on Groovy Bob, Robert Fraser, the old Etonian art dealer, that they find marijuana, amphetamines and 24 white tablets.

which he says, oh, don't worry about those. You know, they're just medicine or something. And actually they turn out to be heroin. And the police are sort of, he was the one man they said, oh, he was a very nice man, very well-spoken, very polite, right?

And he was as good as gold, they said of him. Do you know what? He wasn't just a groovy bob. He'd been Idi Amin's commanding officer in the King's African Rifles. I mean, that's so 60s. So the news of the world anyway, they had enough for their story. They had the amphetamines in Mick Jagger's jacket and they had groovy bobs stash. And so the week later they run this banner headline. They don't name them. They just say several stars.

And then in March, the news breaks that Jagger and Fraser are going to be charged for possession of drugs under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965. And Keith Richards is going to be charged for allowing the smoking of cannabis on his property. Although no drugs have been found on his person. Yeah, exactly. Although there's no evidence that he has... It's never alleged that he's... I mean, I would be surprised if he hadn't. I don't want to...

I don't want to end up in a legal battle with Keith Richards. It's very unlikely. It has been known. He's no stranger to that world, shall we put it that way. So on the face of it, listeners may say, well, this is a very trivial story. But at the time, it becomes absolutely enormous. And I think it becomes an enormous story because it's symbolic of deeper changes. So when the Rolling Stones were growing up in the 40s and early 50s, drugs just simply were never an issue in Britain.

In 1961, a Home Office committee had been set up to look at drugs. And they basically said, there is no need for us to ever do anything about this. There's no need for legislation or anything like that because there are no drugs. There really are no drugs in Britain. The only people who take drugs are people who

At the very top of society, who spend their holidays in North Africa or something. Hashish. Yeah, opium addicts. Yes. But 99% of the population have no connection with the world of drugs whatsoever. But that's not quite true, is it? Because amphetamines are prescribed quite regularly. Aren't they called the housewife's friend? As Theo says, mother's little helper.

Rolling Stones. Yes. So the sense of what drugs actually are, I guess, is evolving as well. It is indeed. Drugs are forced into the headlines really as the 60s proceed. The cannabis conviction figures go up.

reflecting a wider picture. Clearly what's happening is, first of all, young people have a lot more money. They're going out more often. The market for stimulants is bigger than ever before. And there's a rise in cultural cachet because of the associations with music.

But also the supply is greater than before. People are taking more flights. They're going on ferries. It's much easier to import cannabis and cocaine from abroad. So people, particularly from Morocco or from Turkey, there's more demand for drugs and there are more of them. And people are beginning to notice by 1967. So in 1964 and 65, the number of teenagers registered with the Home Office as addicts had gone up threefold.

This is being reported. And I think what happens is that drugs becomes a symbolic issue. So it's an issue in and of itself, but it also stands for deeper anxieties about the family, the impact of affluence on established habits, on immigration, cultural change, all of these things. And the impact of fame as well, because isn't there by...

1966, is it Donovan? There's a documentary on ITV and he's the first kind of big musician

To talk about taking cannabis. Yeah. Or the Beatles, of course. But the Beatles don't kind of officially admit to taking drugs until, I think it's Paul McCartney talking about LSD in 67. Yes, I think it is 67. So actually just before the Redlands trial, interestingly. Yeah. But there is a sense that if you want to be groovy and with it and like your heroes, then you should be smoking pot. Exactly. And I think no one's talking about that in 1964. No.

But by 1967, people are talking about it a lot. It's in the media a lot. And of course, they're reporting the scenes from the counterculture in San Francisco and so on. I mean, their first reports of that are appearing in the British press.

So when you combine that issue, so drugs, which is already symbolic of deeper changes, and the Rolling Stones, who we established last time, are the supreme folk devils for kind of Middle England and for the newspapers of Middle England, you get really the perfect story. And it reminds me a little bit, obviously it's completely different, but it reminds me a little bit of the Profumo scandal, the great spy scandal and sex scandal of 1963, in that it's a very, very enticing and irresistible story that's actually about

a wider sense of a society that's in the throes of rapid change.

cultural change and it's about the intersection of poshness and seaminess isn't it yeah which people love yeah exactly seedy poshness i think if there's old etonians and there's bad behavior people love it absolutely love it so actually the funny thing is the stones are slightly hard done by because although later on they become very much associated with drugs obviously keith richards at this point they are not especially keen drug users so bill wyman and charlie watts were nicknamed

the straightest rhythm section in rock and roll. Yeah, they're going back to hang out and have their cocoa. Yeah, exactly. Keith Richards is not yet taking heroin. And there is an alternative story that the press could have told about the Rolling Stones. So Mick Jagger, a few months after this, my favourite Mick Jagger fact of all time, is that he joined the Country Gentlemen's Association, a landowner society that had been first founded in 1893.

I mean, that's what he chooses to do with his fame. What are the benefits you get for that? Well, like you, Tom, I think he gets probably a special barber jacket of the kind that you wear when you go to your estate in Scotland. Yeah. Salmon fishing. So Keith Richards, the story you could tell about him is he's somebody who collects books about sea battles and spends his time watching old war films. Charlie Watts, the model of loyalty to his mum and to his wife, sends his mum her favourite cake every Friday.

But of course, those stories never appear in the papers at the time because they don't fit. The image that people want of the Rolling Stones is, as the critic Ian Macdonald puts it, is wasted emblems of decadent hedonism. So that's the only story that people want to tell. And I think here's where the house fits in. Richards had bought the house in cash for £17,750 from a Royal Navy Commodore, and the

The house appeared in the newspapers every day. And why? I think because, again, the house is symbolic of something deeper. To the critics, the Rolling Stones shouldn't be at such a house. It's like the Beatles' MBE. It's an affront to everything they believe in. And the judge at the trial...

He also lives in a 16th century Sussex farmhouse, Leslie Block. And he is also a former naval commander who was decorated for bravery in the Second World War. And I think...

He saw the Rolling Stones. I think he's the kind of person undoubtedly who saw the Rolling Stones as an affront. He's the kind of person who would say, this is not what we fought for. But the tragedy is that probably he'd have got on brilliantly with Keith Richards and they could have talked about tactics at the Battle of Abakir Bay. Yeah, camper down. They would have loved all that. Such a shame. I know. And he, because he later gave a speech, Leslie Block,

to the Horsham Ploughing and Agricultural Society, honorary life president, M. Jagger. And he got in massive trouble with the legal authorities because he spoke out of turn about the trial. And he said, I and my fellow magistrates, we did our best to cut these stones down to size.

And I think that speaks... There were a lot of people in the country who felt like that at the time. These young people with their long hair have got ahead of themselves and we need to cut them down to size. And it's interesting that they're going for the Stones and not, for instance, for the Beatles because I just checked the date when Paul McCartney gave that ITN interview talking about taking LSD and it's the 19th of June. So it's...

Pretty much a week before the Stones are brought to trial. Yeah. But the Beatles, you see, as we talked about last time, the national media had decided that the Beatles are patriotic heroes because they had conquered America. So they won't go after them. But the Rolling Stones are the enemy. They're fair game. Yeah, they're fair game. So I think there's a degree to which the trial, which opens on the 27th of June, is a foregone conclusion.

Robert Fraser pleaded guilty straight away. Mick Jagger said, you know, my doctor had told me it was all right to take amphetamines if I was stressed. That's right, isn't it? Because amphetamines, you know, we said are being prescribed all the time. That wasn't good enough. And the magistrate, this guy Block, directed the jury to find him guilty. Fraser and Jagger were then handcuffed in the view of the press, kind of pushed and put into a van and taken to Lewis Prison for the night while the court then turned to deal with Keith Richards.

Now, Keith Richards' offence is incredibly minor. The charge is that he has allowed his house to be used for the taking of drugs. He hasn't dealt in drugs. There's no argument that he's taken them himself. But his appearance in court is probably the most exciting bit of the trial because at this point, the police go into the witness box and tell their story about seeing Marianne Faithfull naked but for a rug. I mean, the fact that she's just jumped out of the bath isn't really mentioned.

Richards' barrister is furious and he says this is completely irrelevant and it gives a false impression of what this gathering was like. It gives an impression of debauchery that is completely unwarranted. And the prosecutor asked Keith Richards about it and he said fantastically,

we're not old men. We're not worried about petty morals. And this, we're not worried about petty morals, was the line that was then kind of emblazoned across the newspapers the next day. And the sentences are bonkers. Jack had got three months in prison. Robert Fraser got six months. And Keith Richards got 12 months. Yeah, that's mad, isn't it? Yeah.

Which seems completely mad. And they were all very shocked. Mick Jagger collapsed in tears in the court. Yeah, they are quite young men. What are they, mid-twenties? Does Richards get that severe a sentence because of his petty morals comment, do you think?

Or is he seen as somehow the most satanic of the lot? Or what's happening there? I think the satanic reputation probably comes along a little bit later. But I think he's been truculent in the dock. And also your theory about the house, perhaps. Is it his house, perhaps? How dare you use such a fine English house to be... Yes.

I think there's a definite element to that. So Richards and Fraser were taken to Wormwood Scrubs. Jagger, Tom, was taken to your neck of the woods in Brixton. Oh, yeah. From where I'm sitting now. Now, Jagger and Richards were out the next day on bail pending appeal, but Fraser not because he hasn't really got a leg to stand on. He has had the heroin on him. Now, interestingly, the Stones themselves and their sort of fans have always had this, what I consider a mad conspiracy theory, that this was all plotted by the British establishment.

by the government. To quote Marianne Faithfull, "By the beginning of 1967 there were highly placed people in Her Majesty's government who actually saw us as enemies of the state.

Keith Richards, that's why we got busted. They saw us as a threat. And it won't surprise you to know, Tom, that I regard this as absolute balderdash. You know, having spent far too much time than is healthy reading and writing about the Harold Wilson government, the idea that anybody in the Wilson government would have any interest in this at all is demented. Sure, but, I mean, the establishment isn't just the government, is it? And you could say that it's the intersection of the media, the police, and the...

JPs and judges. And it wouldn't be, I mean, you wouldn't say that they'd all met up in a gentleman's club and drawn it up, but we've talked about how they, you know, people are ready to go after the stones in a way that they're not after the Beatles, for instance. So there is a sense that a sniff of an opportunity is,

And various segments of the British establishment are going to go after them. I would say that's not an exaggeration. At that point, your establishment becomes very, very broad because you're including hard-bitten newspaper journalists, you know, who themselves love a drink and, you know, are no strangers to debauchery. You have the provincial police who

And you have random magistrates in different parts of the country. I mean, yeah, but Dominic, they're all squares. Well, maybe they are. But here's the thing. The squarest people of all and the most establishment people of all are the people who most eagerly stick up for and defend the Rolling Stones. Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad. This is the great twist of the story that I think is often...

slightly elided or confusingly told. The tabloids love the story. The tabloids were like, brilliant, this is the ultimate story. The broadsheet newspapers, the establishment papers, the Telegraph, the Times and so on, pretty unanimous in saying that the Rolling Stones had been very harshly treated.

The judge and the police had no business bringing their lifestyle into it. You know, the rug and the music or whatever. And that it was a disgrace that they had been handcuffed on their way out of when they were clearly no threat to anyone and they weren't going to run away or anything like that. And the man who makes this case most powerfully is, as I said, the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ex-Tory MP now.

William Rees-Mogg, who's editor of the Times, and he picks out this perfect quotation from Alexander Pope saying,

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? Yeah, exactly. And it's one of the most famous editorials the Times has ever run, by the way. He says, it's outrageous to punish Mick Jagger because of, and I quote, the primitive prejudices of people who resent the anarchic quality of the Rolling Stones' performances, dislike their songs, dislike their influence on teenagers, and broadly suspect them of decadence. And William Rees-Mogg said, it's an unsigned leader, and

So it's from the Times, and it said, British justice demands that Mr. Jagger, they used him as sort of shorthand for the defendants generally, is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. And the further twist about this story is you may say, well, thank goodness, the Times on this is speaking for Britain. But it wasn't, because when you look at surveys and polls from the Times,

A survey a couple of months later found that most young people thought that Mick Jacker's sentence was perfectly fair. It wasn't only one in four thought it was too harsh.

Another survey done by ITV, their World in Action programme, found that 85% of the young people they asked thought that Mick Jagger deserved to go to prison. Some people may be surprised listening to that, but to me that's not surprising at all because all the data we have about young people in the 60s suggests that they had very conservative attitudes towards social and cultural issues. I think also it's tied up with the sense of the Stones as the embodiment of cool.

Because if you are not cool, your resentment and dislike of those who are cool is all the greater, wouldn't you say? Whereas William Rees-Mogg in his pinstripes doesn't have to worry about that. That's not an issue for him. Yeah. Do you think a lot of sort of suburban young people who are not part of the cool set don't go to university, as most people don't, of course.

They think, you know, they're having all this fun. Why should they have all this fun when I have no fun at all? Right. And again, I would imagine that the sense of the poshness of the house would play into that. Yeah, I think you might be right. You know, if you're in your mid-twenties, the opportunities to own a house, let alone a 16th century house in Sussex, fairly limited, I'd have thought. Tom, I think, I don't want to give anything away, but I think if we saw some...

you know rival very successful historians sent to prison for having too much fun i mean our whatsapp group would be going wild no you would i wouldn't i would i would be sorry for them because i'm a nicer person than you well i get the force of your observation dominic so anyway richardson's conviction was overturned on appeal by lord chief justice parker at the end of july

Mick Jagger's conviction stood, but the original sentence was quashed. The prison sentence was considered much too harsh. And actually, that very evening, this is such a 60s thing, he went on a special talk show edition of World in Action with a combination of William Rees-Mogg at the edge of the Times, the Bishop of Woolwich, and Harold Wilson's first Home Secretary, Frank Soskis.

And Jagger went on this program and he made a point of saying, I'm not a rebel. I really respect the post-war time generation. You know, I really was so sad to see myself at the center of all this. And the Times had special praise for him the next day, said he was articulate and thoughtful. He has much more grace of manner than one would have expected.

Which is really not that surprising because, as we said last time, he's a very bright grammar school boy who got into the London School of Economics when it was really hard to do so. And he judges his look perfectly. He looks cool. Yeah. But it's not kind of aggressively...

1967. Kind of white suit, I think. It's sort of, yeah, exactly. Exactly. He's very well dressed. So there is one aspect. It appears that all's well that ends well. But this has not ended well for everybody. Because the third man of the case is this guy, the art dealer, Robert Fraser. And his sentence was not overturned on appeal. And he spent four months in Wormwood Scrubs where he worked in the prison kitchens. And actually, if you read Harriet Viner's biography of him, Groovy Bob,

There's some lovely letters from Jagger and Richards. They're very sweet, actually. They sort of say, oh, so we're thinking about you all the time. We'll have a really groovy time when you get out. They did love him. Yeah, they did. The Beatles liked him, didn't they? Yeah, he staged John Lennon's first art show. Yeah, they all really liked him. But he didn't have a groovy time, actually, when he got out. He became a complete and utter heroin addict. His gallery failed. He went off to India. He had a massive kind of drink and drugs hell.

And he ended up dying of AIDS in 1986. So if you want a story that captures the darker side of the 60s, the casualties and so on, his is a really, really good example. And actually, after the break, when we continue the Rolling Stones' story, this will get an awful lot darker. And we will be looking a lot more at the lives destroyed by the excitement of the 60s in the second half. So join us in a few minutes and we will be painting it black.

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Listeners to The Restless History will know that we do love a good sequel on the show. So, 100 Years War, sequel. French Revolution, sequel. Captain Cook and Nelson haven't had the sequel yet, but I promise they're on their way. And I'll tell you what else is on its way. Our second Sunday Times bestselling book, The Restless History Returns.

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Now listen, will you just cool it for a minute? Because I would really like to say something for Brian. I'd really dig it if you would be with us. Just cool it about how we feel about him just going when we didn't expect him to. Peace. Peace.

He is not dead, he doth not sleep, he hath awakened from the dream of life. Tis we who lost in stormy visions keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife and in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife invulnerable nothings.

We decay like corpses in a charnel. Fear and grief convulse us and consume us day by day. And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

Mick Jagger, of course, reading Adonis, Shelley's elegy on the death of Keats. And he is there comparing John Keats to Brian Jones, who has just died. And he's talking at Hyde Park Festival. I think that comparing Brian Jones to John Keats is flattering Brian Jones. I think it is. But we'll come to that. So, Dominic, you mentioned the Hyde Park concert earlier.

held on the 5th of July 1969. At least a quarter of a million people gathered there to hear it as one of the Stones' two most famous concerts. But what gives it its fame and its resonance is the circumstance, the fact that Brian Jones is found a member of the Stones is dead.

So what's the backdrop there? Because we haven't actually really mentioned Brian Jones up to now because he was not at the party. He was not. And just before I get on to Brian Jones, Tom, I will once again congratulate you on a superb, a really superb impression. I enjoyed that very much. So, yes, Brian Jones is without question the founder of the Rolling Stones. If you listen to the first episode, you'll remember he places the advert. He puts the band together and at first he's effectively the manager.

But from quite an early stage, the others have realized he is fragile, he's flaky, he's very demanding, he's hard to get on with. He crucially refuses to write his own songs because he just wants to basically do blues songs.

So as early as 1963, he's been marginalised by Mick and Keith and Andrew Lou Goldham, their first manager. And over time, this has got much worse. He has been torn between resenting Jagger and Richards and their fame and trying to suck up to them. And actually, by the time they really become internationally famous, the others have come to really...

to really dislike him. I hate to laugh because he has a very tragic fate, but they're so horrible about him in their interviews. So Mick Jagger, normally the way their interviews work is that they always say, oh, we love Brian. Brian was wonderful. Such a shame about Brian. And then in the next sentence, they will say, and I quote,

He was an extremely difficult person. There was something very, very disturbed about him. He was a very paranoid personality. And my favourite one is by Ian Stewart, who'd been their keyboardist, a Scotsman, who was basically pushed out of the band. Guy with a massive chin. Massive chin. And then he became their kind of... Kind of roadie, isn't he? Yeah, kind of roadie and a sort of Stones whisperer who accompanied them on tour and stuff and was sort of the conscience of the band. He said of Brian Jones...

He was a very difficult person. Nobody wanted to be in the same car with Brian for any length of time. And then my favourite line, I think, in all history, being Welsh, he had a very obnoxious streak to him. Well, and that is one for our Welsh listeners who are always complaining that we never do any Welsh history. So, yes. I mean, it's important to emphasise this is an inter-Celtic disagreement here because this is a Scotsman talk. Yeah, of course. So...

As Brian Jones has been forced out of the band, he ended up moving into this muse cottage in Chelsea, had a string of girlfriends who he treated incredibly badly. I mean, there's always discussion about whether John Lennon treated women badly. Brian Jones is in a different league. I mean, he really does beat up his girlfriends. He's drinking at least a bottle of whiskey or brandy a day, swallowing handfuls of pills. The music press start to notice that even at this point, 1965, he's disappearing and he becomes very sort of insecure.

And then at the end of 1965, he meets this woman called Anita Pallenberg. Now, she is groovy. She's an extraordinary person. So she's a West German model from a very, very wealthy artistic German family. She'd studied art restoration and graphic design. She speaks four languages. She's obsessed with black magic. She sort of puts it about that she's a witch.

She ends up, of course, a massive heroin addict. And she and Brian have this very strange, self-destructive relationship. Tons of drugs, putting on and off Nazi uniforms, sadomasochistic sessions. It's all happening. And it reaches a sort of climax with this disastrous holiday they go on to Morocco with Keith Richards. So Keith's in the middle of the Redlands chaos, and he wants to get away from the press. And they say, oh, come with us to Morocco.

And they drive off. I mean, it's a sign of how these worked in the 60s. They didn't fly. They drive. And they get across France and Brian Jones fell ill in Toulouse. Keith Richards and Anita said, well, we'll go on. You can catch us up. By the time he got to Marrakesh and he caught up with them, they'd started to have an affair.

And there's terrible tension. I mean, it's like the world's worst holiday. And eventually Brian Jones cracked and he beat her up really badly. And then he said, oh, I feel a bit bad about that. Why don't you, I'll make it up to you. Why don't we have an orgy with some local prostitutes? Because nothing says sorry like that. And Keith Richards at this point said, come on, mate, enough's enough. And he drove her all the way back to London and left Brian Jones behind.

And Jones took this incredibly badly. So he returned to Britain a complete wreck. And he went around saying to people, they took my music, they took my band, and now they've taken my love. Which would be moving if he hadn't been beating her up. Keith Richards was very... Do you want to read his line, Tom, in your excellent voice? There was extra hassle between Brian and me because I took his old lady.

You know, he enjoyed beating chicks up. Not a likeable guy. I honestly don't think you'll find anyone who liked Brian. If something happened to me at the rest is history and you, Theo and Tabby were saying stuff like that, Tom, I'd be gutted. I'd be absolutely gutted. I was worrying about the other way. Interesting. Anyway, his flat is always being raided in 1967, 68 by the police. Actually, this whole business about the establishment conspiracies. So here I think you have an example of why the establishment conspiracy stuff doesn't work.

The magistrates are constantly kind of letting him off. He'll give him a sentence, then it's overturned on appeal. Is that because it's perhaps in London and they're just grievous in London? No, I don't think so. I think it's that they're genuinely not

They're sort of the silly stereotype, which is, oh, they're just hatchet faced old men. It's just not true. They're sensible, decent. You know, of course, they're small C conservative people, but they're not monsters and they don't they don't hate young people and they don't probably even hate the Rolling Stones. A lot of them. But the judge at the Redlands trial. Yeah, but that's the Horsham Plowing Agricultural Society for you, Tom. Exactly. Well, that's my point.

It's the difference between Chelsea and Horsham. I'm not sure about that. I mean, no offence to anyone in Horsham. I'm talking about the 60s. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I think that's, I think by and large, you know, there are always sort of parodic Daily Express reading magistrates, but also there are a lot who aren't.

And actually, in his case, he always gets psychiatrists and therapists and things to testify on his behalf to say quite reasonably, this bloke is on the edge of something. You know, he's incredibly flaky. Prison will probably kill him. And actually, the magistrates are quite sympathetic. So in 68, when he's up in front of the same people, the same panel, they said to him, you know, again, really?

And they gave him a small fine and they said a third time you really will have to go to prison, but you have to kind of be more sensible. So he then went off to Morocco and hung around in Morocco. So while he's off in Morocco, the Stones are trying to reboot themselves. So in late 67, early 68, they had reached their nadir with their Satanic Majesty's Request, which was this record. Do you think? I think so.

Do you like that? It's not a great album, but it does have one brilliant track, We Love You, where they take the piss out of the trial. Yeah. And they model it on Oscar Wilde. So Mick is Oscar Wilde.

Keith is the High Court judge. And Marianne Faithfull is a frankly sensational Bosie. She kind of looks like a cross between Twiggy and Alfred Douglas. Amazing look. But Tom, this is, I mean, you like dressing. I mean, you're a fan of dressing up. You've done it on occasion for the podcast. You're basically giving it marks for dressing up rather than for musical merit. And music and swagger. There's a great visual joke where there's a fur rug.

And Marianne Faithfull lifts up the fur rug to reveal Mick. Oh, great banter. And also the other thing about that particular track is that it has a very good Mellotron in it. Right. And that is played by Brian. And it's his, I think his last kind of contribution. Well, you see, this is, you and I are looking for different things than Rolling Stones. I'm looking for sort of satanic simplicity.

And you're looking for whimsy and humour. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm responding to the full range of their oeuvre. Are you? Okay. See, I like the fact that they are... They release this and everybody says it's abject. It gets terrible reviews. It's a complete Beatles rip-off and there's too many kind of... Stuff being played backwards and people laughing uncontrollably. And actually...

Come on, get back to your old stuff. And then they start working on the kind of blues roots stuff that becomes Beggar's Banquet. So this is the album that has Street Fighting Man and Sympathy for the Devil. And it's more aggressive and it's more hard edged and it's more the Rolling Stones that everybody wants. So Brian Jones makes virtually no contribution to this at all because he's so off his face on drugs.

And they just start on a new album in 1969 called Let It Bleed, which he basically doesn't really turn up for. Kicks off with Gimme Shelter, doesn't it? Yeah. So they have already started to think he's got to go. And they're working with a replacement who's called Mick Taylor, who is from a band called John Mayles Blues Breakers. A lot of people will know that the Rolling Stones got into terrible trouble with their taxes recently.

And the real issue with them is they discovered that their finances had been ill-managed and they hadn't paid enough tax during the 1960s. And they are going to face colossal tax and legal bills. And to make money, they need to go on tour to America. But...

Brian Jones has two drugs convictions and he almost certainly will be refused entry. And frankly, even if he got in, he will be useless because he can't play publicly. So in June 1969, the 8th of June,

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts drove to Cotchford Farm, formerly A.A. Milne's house, to break the bad news. And they literally break it to him surrounded by Winnie the Pooh memorabilia. Hush, hush, whisper who dares. A sort of blank faced Eeyore looking over at them or whatever. And it's a terrible scene. He pretends he's happy and they say, well, we'll put out a statement that it's musical differences.

Mick Jagger said afterwards, it was difficult, but not as difficult as I thought. So they do it quite coldly. There were different accounts of how he spent his final weeks, whether he was, some people say he was inconsolable, shock. They were shocked at the sight of him. He was frail and downcast. Other people visited him and he was said, they found him upbeat talking about a new band and stuff. Possibly this is the effect of the drugs, that his moods are all over the place.

And then on the 2nd of July 1969, it was a lovely warm day, he's got a new girlfriend called Anna Volin, who's Swedish.

And they're spending their time hanging out by a swimming pool. He's got terrible asthma, Brian Jones, so he's always taking his inhaler. He's got a lovely stripy blue T-shirt, hasn't he? He does. He loves a Breton. That's a Breton T-shirt, isn't it? Yeah, a normal Gautier. And late that night, they hang around at the swimming pool with a bloke called Frank Thorogood, who was doing building work for Jones on the farm. See, that sounds sinister, doesn't it? Do you think so? Yeah, I do. Generally, in these kind of dramas where there are...

somebody's doing the building. Yeah, why is he there in the evening? That's the question. They're drinking loads of vodka and taking amphetamines and then they decide to have a swim at around midnight. Frank Thorogood and the others get out of the pool and go inside, leaving Brian in the pool. And when they return, Tom, Brian is dead!

He's floating lifeless in the pool. So they called an ambulance and whatnot, and the police, police pathologist said, he's full of drink and drugs. Coroner said he's obviously drowned because he's off his face on drink and drugs. However...

The suspicion of murder, murder, has hung over this. If you go on the internet, there are demented conspiracy theories. I mean, the two best ones are one, killed by the mafia, presumably using the same team that killed Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, and that the other Rolling Stones killed him.

which seems unlikely to me, actually. Improbable. So in the 2000s, they started to become allegations. You can find them very easily. They're in Anna Volin's own book, The Girlfriend's Book, The Murder of Brian Jones, that the builder, you identified him from the beginning, Tom. I did. I fingered him. Frank Thorogood. You're safe from being sued by him because he died in 1993. And it is said that on his deathbed, he made a confession.

that he had killed Jones. So you're sticking to that, are you? No, I'm floating it out, but I'm saying that this is probably what would happen if this were a Sunday evening detective drama. Like Bergerac? No, not Bergerac. Bergerac's brilliant. You can't be dissing Bergerac on this show. No, what's it? The one where they're always killing each other. The Village. Midsummer Murders. Midsummer Murders. Midsummer Murders. It'd make a brilliant edition of Midsummer Murders. Yeah. Well, anyway, Charlie Watts doesn't think that.

that he despises I don't know what he thinks about or he thought about Midsommar Murders he'd have loved it he'd have stayed in on a Sunday night he would actually a cup of cocoa settled down he'd have loved it he'd have watched the Antiques Roadshow first and then he'd have watched Midsommar he'd have actually exhibited stuff on the Antiques Roadshow given the chance I imagine yeah he'd have lent his house as a set exactly well Bill Wyman with a metal detector

Remember Bill Wyman used to go around with a metal detector detecting things? I mean, there's another side to Bill Wyman's life which we don't need to go into. But, well, all of them. Charlie Watts said, all that about Brian being knocked off is rubbish. I know a lot of people...

This is the next line is classic Rolling Stones interview. I know a lot of people who would have willingly knocked him off, but it didn't happen. Slightly of disappointment about that, I think. Yeah. Charlie Watts said his pool was too hot. Whenever you got there, it used to shimmer with heat. You would drive down there on a spring morning and the heat would be rising off the top. So it was too hot. And that's what killed him, according to Charlie Watts. Right. Well, I probably...

probably accurate yeah well maybe he doesn't sound i mean clearly he was very very ill and not treating his illness in a sensible way exactly i think that's exactly right now that the rolling stones had already made a plan to have this concert at hyde park on the saturday the 5th of july

for the maximum publicity to unveil his replacement, Mick Taylor. So they were going to have this free concert. And the arrangements had already been made. A special souvenir edition of the London Evening Standard, six different TV crews. They were going to be transported to the stage from the hotel in an armoured personnel carrier. Mick Jagger had already ordered his outfit from the boutique, Mr. Fish. And what an outfit it is. And what an outfit. And they didn't want to scrap it.

So Charlie Watts said, let's turn it into a memorial to Brian. And so it is that on the 5th of July, this great 1960s set piece at Hyde Park

There are somewhere between a quarter and half a million people. And it is actually a lovely scene. There's no trouble at all. It's a beautiful day. There are lots of people in caftans. They're all eating ice creams by the serpentine. The police are kind of chuckling and, you know, posing for photos or whatever. Now, there are, in a sign of things to come, 50 Hells Angels who have been hired to protect the equipment. But, you know, they get on all right with the crowd. It's all fine.

Concert starts at one o'clock, various warm-up acts, and then at four o'clock, the stones finally appear. And Tom, there is a bombshell as Mick Jagger unveils this long-awaited outfit that he's had specially made by Mr. Fish.

And Philip Norman, the Stones biographer, says, whatever the audience were expecting, no one could have expected him to take the stage in lipstick, rouge and eyeshadow and wearing a white frilly garment, which for all the white vest and bell bottoms visible beneath, still resembled nothing so much as a little girl's party dress. It's an amazing moment, isn't it? It is. Because it's the first time this has really happened. Well, something like this. It's surely up there with...

Gene Shrimpton's appearance at the Battle of Melbourne as one of the great turning points in world history. It's up there with the Cressy, isn't it? The Battle of Cressy. The Battle of Melbourne. And what was the other one we said? Wolves inventing Europe in the 1950s. No, I think you said that. Yeah. But I mean, it's definitely up there with decisive moments. Well, on the rest is history. We only do the very, very biggest and most important historical moments, don't we? And actually, so he's also got a crucifix and a kind of dog collar.

Leather dog collar. And your reading, eccentric as it was, was too good. Because if you watch him on YouTube. Yeah, he's worse, isn't he? His reading of Shelley, it actually improves a bit. It does get better as he gets in. But when he starts, he's clearly, I mean, God, he's quite young. You know, they're in their 20s. Quarter of a million people. It's a bizarre situation to be in. He's clearly very nervous and he makes a dreadful mess of it. So he's getting all the words wrong and stumbling and stuff and all of this.

However, the press coverage was bonkers. That observer, from far off, you might have supposed that this great gathering had come to hear a famed religious leader or some Eastern mystic. At the end, they release all these butterflies. They're all dead, aren't they? They got terrible complaints. The butterflies had all suffocated in the boxes. Disastrous. The concert itself was very bad, by all accounts. They're all very nervous. Mick Taylor is making his debut. He's terrified.

However, as a public spectacle, a huge occasion, a great success. And as with every great 60s occasion, a mad column afterwards in The Guardian.

So Richard Gott. He's a KGB agent, isn't he? He was a KGB agent of influence, I believe. He gave my first book, Never Had It So Good, a disobliging review. Okay, well, let's diss him. There wasn't enough about the Cuban Revolution in it. And people in Britain cared about nothing so much as the Cuban Revolution. He didn't dig your insistence on washing machines. No, he said, what's all this nonsense about people going to garden centres and Kingsley Amis? I want the Cuban Revolution.

Anyway, he said of this concert, it was a great and epoch-making event in British social history. Anyone who wants to understand the present political malaise in Britain, or who wants to have an inkling what Britain will be like in ten years' time, should have been at the park on Saturday, he said.

And of course, when you do the maths, 10 years on from this concert is almost exactly the point when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. So a prediction that did not work out exactly as he anticipated. Well, the Stones are not in favour of high taxes. No. And Mrs Thatcher was also not in favour of high taxes. So in a sense, you could say that the Stones' decision to leave Britain and go to France is a prefiguring of the 30s.

Thatcherite tax-cutting regime. Because actually, it's just after this concert that their tax advisor, who is, I believe, a Bavarian aristocrat called Prince Rupert Leuvenstein, who didn't like their music, had never heard of them before they took him on, but was brilliant at taxes...

He said to them, you need to get out of Britain. You have been very poorly advised. You've been underpaying tax for years. The only way you can basically escape this and not be completely bankrupt is to get out of the country. So you're two years non-resident and that means they go to France. But of course, they still need to make money. And so in October, they fly to America for their first tour since the summer of 1966.

And actually, when they get to America at the end of 1969, they are young, but they're not politically naive. They can tell that something has changed in the atmosphere. So listeners will remember our America in 1968 series. And we've moved on less than a year since the end of that Nixon's election.

Keith Richards said afterwards, he said, when we went to America before, it was Walt Disney and hamburger dates. But when you came back in 1969, it wasn't anymore. It's darker. They've had riots. They've had Vietnam. Just the atmosphere feels, everything just feels more conflicted. And, you know, even the gigs are

There was much less screaming than there was. There aren't teeny boppers there. The fans seem older. And they comment on it. Charlie Watts, people didn't scream anymore. The music was taken seriously. Mick Jagger, he said the real surprise was that people actually listened to the music. But presumably they are older. I mean, the teeny boppers have grown up. Exactly. And the tickets are also much more expensive. This is the first...

rock tour, I think, where there were a lot of complaints about the prices of the tickets. Because, of course, they're charging as much as they can at this point because they're desperate for money because of their tax imbroglio. But also they can because both they and the fans have grown up. And I think this is actually part of a much bigger cultural shift that we often forget about. Because right up to this point, when people talked about the Rolling Stones, the phrase they used to describe them was a pop group.

They never called them a rock group. They called them a pop group. And I think it's this point, 1967-69, that effectively rock music is invented as something serious and grown up and not teenage and not trivial.

And I think they are absolutely the center of this. And I think there are three elements to it. So one is that cultural shift that we just mentioned, the shift from the kind of hippy-dippy flower power, everything is fun and sweet and sunny, to the darkness of the kind of Nixon years, which just seems the perfect match to a move from kind of pop to rock, to something a little bit more conflicted and a bit heavy and a bit more serious. Yeah.

The musicians themselves, the second thing, they are much older. You know, they're in their late 20s coming into their 30s. They no longer want to be pop stars. They want to be serious musicians. So you have people like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck or whatever who pride themselves on being kind of guitar virtuosos. I'm not just I don't want people to scream. I want people to listen to the music. So there's a kind of an earnestness to it.

And then the third thing, probably the most important thing, the market has changed. So if you're 16 in 1963 at the dawn of the kind of pop revolution, what are you? You're in your mid-twenties now. And given what we know about the social structure at the time, you're almost certainly married and you almost certainly have a job. So there is a self-consciously adult market who don't want music anymore to dance to, which was the main thing.

point of music at the beginning of the 60s, they wanted to actually listen to the lyrics, which people didn't do. Which they might start printing on the back of the album. Like with Sgt. Pepper. Exactly. Which they print on the back of the album. And it's at this point, the singles market goes into a long-term decline and the album market begins to surge and albums are much more profitable. So it makes sense now for bands, they start to call themselves bands rather than groups.

And it makes sense for them to cater to these older listeners. So you get a band like Led Zeppelin, who emerge at this point. They don't bother with the singles market at all. They just want to make albums largely for slightly older listeners who actually aren't the teenage girls who empowered this at the very beginning. There's a brilliant discussion of this in a book by Charlie Gillick called The Sound of the City. And he talks about what a contrived and artificial sort of cleavage it is between pop and rock. But we're now so used to it.

We've fallen for the PR basically, because it's about ultimately about working out how to sell more records. Older people won't buy music that they think is for teenagers. So this is the way you basically say, no, it's not. It's a whole new genre. And that's how they do it. Anyway, let's end the episode, this enormous episode. And indeed the story of the stones in the sixties with the final act of that American tour. So all through this tour, they have had massive criticism for their high ticket prices and

And they decide, because they're kindly people, that they will end with another free concert like Hyde Park. And they say, let's do it in San Francisco, in the city of the counterculture. We'll have a little festival. We'll get the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Californian bands to come and join us. But partly because of their kind of outlaw reputation, but also because the cultural and political climate has changed, swung against the counterculture with Nixon's election and so on, they don't get permits.

So they decide they will do it at the Altamont Raceway, which is 60 miles from San Francisco in the absolute middle of nowhere. When we were on our tour, Tom, our US tour last year, we drove not a million miles away from the Altamont Raceway, didn't we? And it is, you know, California is a big place. You go inland, you're a long way from the cities. It's very rural. And that's where they're going to the kind of just a sort of suburban scrub of nowhere.

And this place, it's like a bowl and the stage is at the bottom of the bowl, at the bottom of a slope. So a slightly weird arrangement. And to protect the stage, the management of the Grateful Dead, who have said they'll help to organise it, enlist the local Hells Angels and they pay them with $500 worth of beer. We mentioned the Hells Angels at Hyde Park. This is a very different atmosphere. They have billiard cues, don't they? And motorbike chains as weapons. Yes.

So 300,000 people descend on this raceway. It's a very miserable kind of grey day. Everybody gets absolutely wasted very quickly, very drunk. There's a lot of fighting and

And by the time the stones come on, the mood has got very ugly. If you watch the footage, Mick Jagger is constantly saying, cool down, guys, cool down and all this kind of thing. They have to stop the third song, Sympathy for the Devil. It's actually where the stones kind of slightly satanic pretensions are exposed. You know, they're not really as satanic as all that because they're clearly very uncomfortable and very discomforted by the fighting below them.

And then the fourth song, this fight breaks out between the Hells Angels and an 18-year-old black man called Meredith Hunter. And it culminates with this dreadful scene, which if you're desperate to see it, you can see it on YouTube.

Hunter pulls out what seems to be a long barreled revolver and one of the Hells Angels kind of parries him and then stabs him repeatedly. And then the other Hells Angels kind of stamp on him while he lies dying. The Stones actually finished their set. They knew somebody was hurt, but they didn't know how seriously. And then they effectively flee the scene by helicopter.

And it turns out that Meredith Hunter wasn't the only person killed that day. So two fans were run over by a car and another drowned in a drainage ditch. And at the time, it was seen as the sort of the symbolic punctuation point at the end of the 1960s. I mean, it literally is at the end of the 1960s, at the very end of 1969. But all the kind of rock critics and stuff said, oh my gosh, you could hardly find a better kind of

encapsulation of the changing mood and so on. The US rock writer Ralph Gleeson a few months later wrote, if the name Woodstock has come to denote the flowering of one phase of the youth culture, Altamont has come to mean the end of it. Now, I don't actually think that's quite right. I mean, I think it already ended. Nixon had already been president for a year. The summer of love was over. The optimism of the 60s was already a very distant memory. Isn't it because the

the Stones, other people playing at Altamont. And they have provided the soundtrack over the previous two years for the process by which the Summer of Love kind of fades away.

that gives Altamont its kind of symbolic resonance? I think so, yeah. I think so. I think it's a different band, a less well-known band and one without the folk devil reputation, I think would not be such a big story. I completely agree with that. Yeah. So, I mean, they're playing Sympathy for the Devil and that has kind of allusions to the Kennedys, doesn't it? And who is it shot them? You and me. Yeah.

And then you've got Gimme Shelter, which is, I mean, I know that it's Keith Richards, isn't it? He was watching people run from a thunderstorm. Actually, I think in Robert Fraser's flat, actually. But I mean, they say overtly it's about Vietnam. You know, that death and murder is just a shot away. And if they had not produced songs of that calibre,

talking about violence, linking it into Vietnam. Yeah. And then the fact that it happens symbolically at the end of the 60s. I can see why people give it this mythic resonance in California. Oh, yeah. I mean,

I mean, they greatly resented that. Of course they would. I mean, they would absolutely repudiate that. I think it is actually a tribute to the incredible power and resonance of the songs that they're putting out over 68 and 69, that it comes to have this resonance. But I understand why the Stones themselves wouldn't like it. Yeah, I think that's fair enough, Tom. Of course, for the Stones, you know, life goes on and they're in the middle of a fantastic run of albums. Two of their very best albums come in the next couple of years, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Yeah, because they go back to France, don't they? Yeah, and they're producing amazing stuff in France.

And, I mean, by this point, what they've done is effectively invented what it is to be a rock band, I would say, to an extent that we now are so familiar with it, we take it for granted. Sex, drugs, rebellion, songs about with the sort of slightly satanic pretensions, death, all those themes that people associate with rock music as opposed to pop music. It's the Rolling Stones who established the template, which is why I think

They are the only band, actually, of that era that will be remembered as the Beatles will be. So, of course, there are lots of other fantastic outfits, but none of them quite, for me, have the same symbolic resonance as the Rolling Stones do. What do you think, Tom? I completely agree. And I think that, as with the Beatles, it's the combination of incredible music with...

an ability to serve as a lightning rod for very broad cultural trends that gives them the status they have. Yeah, agreed. Although do you know the one person who doesn't agree with us on this? It's Mick Jacker.

He was interviewed by Sounds in 1976. He said a brilliant line, which makes me think much better of him. He said, people overestimate the Rolling Stones. I don't think the Stones were as good as people think. Yeah, but bear in mind, that's 1976 and punk is about to come. Yes, that's true. And by that point, he must be feeling...

I mean, the kind of the tension between his growing years and the fact that he's supposedly the embodiment of the youth revolution, which to this day remains probably what people best now know the Sloanes for. But it's good to get back and be reminded of what they were. Yeah, I agree. Because now they're a parody.

of that kind of youthful anarchy and rebellion. But at one point, they were the embodiments of it. They were, exactly. However complicated a way. All right. So that's The Rolling Stones. Shall we return next week with something completely different? Let's do that. All right. On that bombshell, goodbye. Bye-bye.