1967:  Stones gagged

The Rolling Stones appeared on British ITV’s ‘Eamonn Andrews Show’ and showed why the group fell foul of the establishment – delighting the younger generation.

The group’s hit at the time ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ soared to number 1, but they were not allowed to perform it on the show because of a Musician’s Union ban. They had similar problems on the Ed Sullivan Show in the USA in January 1967 and had to change the lyrics to ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together’. Since the band first hit the big time in 1963, the Stones created chaos in the ‘sanitised’ world of pop, where teenage love is ‘Sealed With a Kiss’.

It was not just their loutish behaviour and their lyrics – lead singer Mick Jagger’s uninhibited stage act was outrageously sexy. Howling mobs storming the stage had to be subdued with teargas. Parents were appalled, but to a generation clamouring for underage access to ‘the pill’, it was a breath of fresh air.

And Jagger further announced on the show that he was suing a Sunday newspaper for an article connecting him with drug-taking pop stars. In early 1967, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their recreational drug use, after ‘News of the World’ published a three-part feature entitled ‘Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You’.

The series described alleged LSD parties hosted by The Moody Blues 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 February 5) 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 Rolling 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 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. Two days after the article was published, Jagger filed a writ for libel against the ‘News of the World’.

Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.

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