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| Lazy Bones |
Jul. 28, 2003. 01:00 AM
The drug raid on Keith's mansion
Marianne Faithfull first met the Rolling Stones at a party March 27, 1964. Only 17, she was still a student at a convent school, but the band's manager Andrew Loog Oldham wanted her to sing, "As Tears Go By," a song the Stones felt wasn't right for them. Months later, it was a hit.
In the third of four exclusive excerpts from The Rolling Stones: An Oral History (McArthur & Company) by Toronto writer/broadcaster Alan Lysaght, we find how she found herself at the centre of the biggest scandal in the band's early history.
February 12, 1967. Acting on a tip from News of the World, police descend on Keith's country home searching for drugs.
Keith Richards: A bunch of us had gone down to my place for the weekend for a party, which we had done before a million times, it was nothing unusual. As it happened we'd all spent the day tripping on acid and we're just chilling out when the cops come banging on the door. It was pretty weird, all these police running around the house. Marianne Faithfull had just taken a bath and was sitting in front of the TV with a rug wrapped around her so it was deemed to be an orgy. That wasn't an orgy—they should have showed up at other times—but this time was no orgy. In the end they could only charge me with allowing people to smoke dope on my premises, and Mick they nailed for having a couple of amphetamine pills he'd bought legally at a druggist in Italy. It was just our time was up. They didn't mind kids with lots of money fooling around, but we didn't pay them the respect they wanted. The Beatles put up with the bullshit and smiled nicely while they took their MBEs. We always said no to that sort of shit. So it was just time to try and shut us down.
Marianne Faithfull: We had been out all day and down at the beach so my clothes and hair were covered in sand and leaves. I hadn't brought a change of clothes so after I took a bath I covered up with a fur rug and dried off. The next thing all these police are running about and when they saw me they immediately started fabricating these absurd stories about sex orgies. It was bizarre. There was no sex trip at all that day. I was there as one of the boys, if you will. When Brian got busted the day Mick and Keith got out of jail, that's when it hit me that this whole thing was a planned conspiracy. They were trying to save the morals of the youth by fabricating offences to get rid of a music group. In the end it backfired because it absolutely mythologized the Stones beyond anything Andrew could ever have dreamed up.
Mick Jagger: I guess it seems like a bit of a joke now, but at the time it was really serious. I mean, we were going to jail! For what? And everybody's talking about it and the newspapers have it on the front page everyday and it kind of distracts you from the music, which is what we were meant to be doing. |
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| mac_daddy |
thanks for the info - this board is the shit!!! |
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| Martha |
WORD! Rocks Off...ROCKS!!! |
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| gypsy |
Well, thank God they didn't utilize chiba dna. |
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