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proudmary
R.I.P. the Rolling Stones, killed by one man's jealousy
Ray Connolly

Keith Richards' memoirs, published tomorrow, humiliate Jagger with sexual taunts. Here, a man who's known them for decades says their partnership can never recover
Let’s face it, the Rolling Stones are dead. It really is all over now. It hasn’t been officially announced, and probably never will be, so intricate are the business deals that bind the individual members. But the chances of them ever touring or recording together again have to be nil.
And who finally finished off the Stones, those once seemingly indestructible dinosaurs of rock? None other than Keith Richards, lead guitarist and one of the founders of the band. In a series of gossipy, snide and sexually insulting references to Mick Jagger in his autobiography, Life, Richards has made any future for the band impossible.
After almost five decades, the original enfants terribles of rock and roll, now perhaps better known as its ancien régime, are finally going to have to call it a day.

Is it all over now? Will Keith Richards' revelations about Jagger spell the end of the Rolling Stones. Friend Ray Connolly seems to think so
How, after reading pages of wounding personal tittle-tattle about himself, can Mick Jagger stand next to his former friend on stage again? How can he pretend it doesn’t matter what juvenile jibes Keith has written about him, when he knows that most of the audience, who will all be fans, will have read the book that has ridiculed him? Jagger hasn’t uttered a word, but what I’ve been hearing from his circle is that he’s ‘furious and hurt’.
And although Richards has been quoted as saying that Mick had read the book before it went to the printers, Jagger’s friends are insisting that he was only shown parts of it. What’s more, it’s rumoured that when the book is published tomorrow, other jokey sneers and insults will be revealed.
How can Mick pretend it doesn’t matter what juvenile jibes Keith has written about him, when he knows that most of the audience will have read the book that has ridiculed him?
As a songwriting and performing partnership, Jagger and Richards was always a rocky marriage. In their uproarious beginning of a Sixties sexual-free-for-all, they called themselves the Glimmer Twins, Mick having the distinctive voice and brilliant stage performance while Keith invented much of the guitar sound that was the Rolling Stones. They needed each other, but they were always very different creatures.
If that marriage exists now in any form, and I can’t really see how it can, it’s said to be ‘rockier than ever’. How can it not be? Would any man, famous or otherwise, not be appalled and mortified to read in his oldest friend’s book a scornful reference to the size of his ‘todger’ — to use Richards’ schoolboy euphemism?
For all his adult life, Mick Jagger has gone blithely about his job of being a famous rock star, apparently not giving a damn when he was publicly attacked. Certainly he’s never been one to sue journalists who wrote deeply unflattering stories about him, or even libellous accounts.
He seemed to just laugh them off, believing that they only added to his notoriety. And that notoriety never stopped increasing the commercial value and wealth of the Rolling Stones brand.

Acting like a naughty schoolboy: Richards has made wild claims about his sexual prowess amid speculation that it could be revenge for Jagger stealing his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in the 1960s

Street fighting men: Jagger and Richards have known each other since they were four-years-old, but in recent years it appears the guitarist has become jealous of his friend's handling of the band
But those attacks came from outside. Richards’ jokey little insinuations come from within the family of the Stones. It seems to me that in an act of rock and roll fratricide, Richards has deliberately tried to castrate the reputation of his oldest friend and with it has destroyed the Rolling Stones themselves.
Knowing the damage he was certain to do, his motives seem unfathomable. Could it be simply that he’s jealous, always has been, and that finally it’s showing?
Last week Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s second wife, referred witheringly to Richards’ taunts as ‘penis envy’. She’s a smart woman.

Rock and roll is music. But from the beginning it was always associated with sex. ‘Sex, drugs and rock and roll’, goes the mantra that has always accompanied the Rolling Stones.
But if Keith Richards came to represent the drugs element of that equation, Mick Jagger, stripped to the waist on stage, those famously full lips curved around the microphone, was always the sex part.
The implication here is clear, Richards, has been told that he was the better Stone between the sheets. And seemingly he believed it.
From the beginning, his performances were deliberately lascivious. That was his role, while off-stage there’s been a long litany of beautiful women at his side and in his bed — from Jean Shrimpton’s younger sister, Chrissie, in his earliest days of celebrity, through Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Carly Simon, his first wife Bianca and on through Carla Bruni, Jerry Hall, model Luciana Morad and many more to his current girlfriend, American model L’Wren Scott.
That sounds to me like a guy with few doubts about his sex appeal.
But now, acting like a naughty schoolboy, Keith Richards — with whom Jagger wrote all the Stones’ biggest hits, from The Last Time and Satisfaction to Brown Sugar and Honky Tonk Women — has gleefully, wilfully tried to puncture the virile, sex symbol image of the friend he’s known since he was four years old.
Richards says he’s been informed (presumably by one of the women both men have slept with — which probably means either his first wife Anita Pallenberg or Marianne Faithfull) that his pal doesn’t provide the most fun in bed.
The implication here is clear and boastful: it has to be that he, Richards, has been told that he was the better Stone between the sheets. And seemingly he chose to believe it. Well, he would, wouldn’t he!
In teenage boys, such boasting would be pathetic. From a man of 67 it’s incomprehensible. Keith might excuse himself by saying that it’s just part of his usual droll, outrageous, mischievous conversation, and that he’s been winding up Jagger for the fun of it all their adult lives.
But it’s a lewd assertion to which Jagger has no way of responding, short of turning to his legion of women and saying ‘ask them’, which, of course, he would never do.

Arch rebel: Keith Richards has told many fictitious stories and hell-raising tales in his time, but it appears his latest offering is trying to destroy the reputation of his great friend
Many will argue that none of us knows, let alone cares, whether anything Richards says is true or not. Certainly, his book doesn’t tell us anything new about Jagger. We already know more about Mick’s love life than that of any other man on the planet.
What it does tell us — as do the other assertions that for years Richards has referred spitefully to Jagger in the recording studio as ‘Your Majesty’ and ‘Brenda’ — is quite a lot about Keith Richards.
And though he’s been amusing us for donkeys’ years with fictitious stories created to further embellish the outlaw image he’s created for himself (such as how he smoked his dead father’s ashes), it would seem a deep-seated resentment about his song-writing partner has finally surfaced.
But where does that resentment come from? Could it be simply a matter of lifelong jealousy? Does it go back to the early days on the road when the goofy young Keith was, according to a ‘girl count’ by former Stones bass player Bill Wyman, unsuccessful with the opposite sex?
Or is it finally get-back time for those occasions in the late Sixties when Jagger stole Richards’ girl Anita Pallenberg for the occasional dalliance while she was appearing with the singer in the film Performance?
Keith admits he wrote possibly his greatest song, the anguished Gimme Shelter, while waiting for his unfaithful girlfriend to leave Jagger.
In his book, Richards professes not to be the jealous type, saying that when Pallenberg, whom he himself had ‘stolen’ from a third Stone, Brian Jones, sometimes didn’t come home at night after filming, he knew where she would be and simply went off and slept with one of his old girlfriends.
‘I didn’t find out for ages about Mick and Anita, but I smelled it,’ he writes. ‘Mostly from Mick, who didn’t give any sign of it, which is why I smelt it?.?.?.?’
Then he assumes a worldly nonchalance. ‘You’ve got an old lady like Anita Pallenberg and expect other guys not to hit on her? I heard rumours?.?.?.?good luck to him?.?.?.?Anita’s a piece of work. She probably nearly broke his back.’
But I don’t believe he wasn’t hurt, isn’t still hurt. It might have been, as he says, ‘like Peyton Place back then, a lot of wife-swapping or girlfriend- swapping’, but I think he cared a lot more than he lets on.
Indeed, he admits he wrote possibly his greatest song, the anguished Gimme Shelter, while waiting for his unfaithful girlfriend to leave Jagger and come home to him.
He and Jagger might have been partners in music, but there was, he says, always a rivalry about women. ‘It wasn’t the first time we’d been in competition for a bird, even for a night on the road,’ he writes. ‘Who gets that one? Who’s Tarzan around here? It was like two alphas fighting. Still is, quite honestly. But it’s hardly the basis for a good relationship, right?’
Right. And crowing about how 40 years ago he got even when Jagger was living with Marianne Faithfull and he called round and had sex with her when his friend was out, is hardly the basis for any kind of future for the Rolling Stones. ‘I was knocking Marianne, man,’ he writes with a vitriolic sneer towards Jagger. ‘While you’re missing it, I’m kissing it.’


What they do best: Jagger and Richards have written some of the all time great songs including Gimme Shelter, Brown Sugar and Satisfaction
As it happens, his brief delight was cut short when Mick came home early. ‘It was our only time, hot and sweaty. We were just there?.?.?.?in the afterglow, my head nestled between those beautiful jugs. And we heard his car drive up and there was a big flurry, and I did one out of the window, through the garden?.?.?.?and I realised I’d left my socks.
‘Well, he’s not the sort of guy to look for socks. Marianne and I still have this joke. She sends me messages. “I still can’t find your socks.”?’
Women: they’re one interpretation of why Richards seems to have so deliberately set about destroying the group and billion-dollar brand he helped create. But there’s another which might be equally potent.
Could it be that for years Richards has resented the way Jagger used his growing business acumen to take over the running of the Rolling Stones after the group had been ripped off by their American manager, Allen Klein, at the end of the Sixties?
Is Keith jealous that, as he spiralled into heroin addiction, his pal Mick, the boy who when they started out couldn’t even play the guitar, cleaned up his act and became the first among equals in the band — in effect, the manager?

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Has it been driving Keith mad that over the decades Mick has become increasingly sophisticated and high-handed, making all the business and most of the artistic decisions, leaving him simply to play his guitar, the singer’s side man?
He may have deservedly enjoyed the plaudits from the rock cognoscenti, because he’s a brilliant, knowledgeable and original musician, but to the world at large Jagger is the main man, even having accepted a knighthood.
Has all this been irking Richards, the arch rebel, for years?
Very possibly.
But there’s another side to the story. Without Jagger taking over the running of band, the Rolling Stones would almost certainly have ceased to exist decades ago. Keith Richards certainly wasn’t equipped to do it. He never even tried.

Sex, drugs and rock & roll: While those days may be behind them, the band have developed into a billion dollar brand, in part due to Jagger's business dealings
When Jagger, largely by dint of personality, assumed the paramount role in the early Seventies, the Rolling Stones were facing a crisis.
Despite having already had all their biggest hits, they were nothing like as rich as they should have been, because of bad deals they’d signed early in their careers. They still don’t own most of their early recordings.
Without a decent manager, they were heading for rock and roll oblivion. So Jagger reinvented the group as ‘the greatest rock and roll band in the world’. And as ‘stadium rock’ arrived in the Eighties, no penny was spared in turning Rolling Stones shows into circus-like spectacles as they travelled the globe.
It was a business plan that worked, finally making the band — including Keith Richards — very rich indeed.
I’ve seen the Rolling Stones on stage many times, and what great nights they gave us. But I’m convinced there won’t be any more — and I, like millions of others, will be very sorry.

But to do it all, Mick, the one from the London School of Economics with the business brain, had to go from being simply the vocalist and focal point in the band to becoming the boss. Maybe Keith just couldn’t stomach that.
Is that why he describes Jagger as sometimes being ‘unbearable’? Ruefully, he says he hasn’t been to Jagger’s dressing room in 20 years, and wonders where his old friend went. ‘Lost to fame,’ he suggests.
The truth is people change with age, and all rock groups break up, almost invariably because of inner tensions between the members. That Jagger kept three of the original members (Richards, drummer Charlie Watts and himself) together for so long is extraordinary.
Years ago, Mick Jagger was given a huge advance by a publisher to write an account of his life and the group’s adventures. In the end, he sent the money back, claiming not to be able to remember much of what happened. There was probably much truth in that, but was there also a diplomatic reluctance to open old wounds?

Schoolboy rockers: The band look remarkably fresh in 1964 ahead of their anti-establishment and hell-raising antics in later years

Friends for life: It is quite remarkable that three of the original members have survived in the band, but have inner tensions finally caused the end of the Stones?
Richards, on the other hand, seems to have been determined to do the exact opposite. Is it possible he didn’t realise how lancing his comments would be? Or is it all a remarkable calculation, a way of ending the band and a friendship which had long since, like a dead marriage, grown cold?
If that is the case, then it almost seems like a re-run of the demise of The Beatles 40 years ago, when John Lennon deliberately did everything he could to smash the band’s image, while launching scathing comments about Paul McCartney, his chief partner in the group.
The irony to the latest row is that it’s been rumoured there was to be a special issue of commemorative stamps by the Royal Mail in 2012 to celebrate the Stones’ 50th anniversary as a band.
The very notion that the most rebellious anti-establishment group of the Sixties would one day be so honoured would have been something no one could possibly have imagined back in those tumultuous early days. It will be a shame if the issue is now called off.
I’ve seen the Rolling Stones on stage many times, and what great nights they gave us as the tours and shows got bigger and bigger.
But I’m convinced there won’t be any more — and I, like millions of others, will be very sorry

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DandelionPowderman
Bollocks![/quote


why? it looks like very reasonable statement
The situation is disgusting , no matter how much fans here on this board pretend that nothing happened

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DandelionPowderman
If they were in their 20s, Mick might have had problems with this. Today, they are in their late 60s and a large corporation, tied together business-wise, whether they like it or not.

That's why an autobiography like this never will stop The Rolling Stones.[/quote



I hope so. I just think that one can have doubts in situation like that

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mickschix
Why wouldn't Jagger be " furious and Hurt"? Why is that hard to imagine?

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Cocaine Eyes

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mickschix
Why wouldn't Jagger be " furious and Hurt"? Why is that hard to imagine?

Jagger has already read the book. He would easily have nixed anything he didn't want to be published. In fact, Jagger is probably having a great laugh over some of the miniscule details. I'm sure Jagger knows how to read a book in its entirety before getting upset.

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northernale1
what was the stones motto all through the years ,, any press is good press..

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northernale1


proudmary looks like this has hit you harder then Mick

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proudmary

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northernale1


proudmary looks like this has hit you harder then Mick

Hey, I didn't write this article, I only posted it here
But people seem interested - more than 400(checking - 700) views in 3 hours.
and not only here on this board people can't stop talking about it, like this article in Telegraph.
If you ask me, I think it's kind of disappointing