Mick Jagger attacks former financial advisor over Rolling Stones Book

Mick Jagger attacks former financial adviser over Rolling Stones Book


He is used to taking warts-and-all exposes and stories about him with good
grace, but Mick Jagger has reacted angrily to a new book where the warts
involved are the Rolling Stones’ financial arrangements.








Jagger has certainly been upset
by the publication of Prince Rupert’s memoirs A Prince Among Stones.
Photo:
REUTERS






By Nick Britten

3:32PM GMT 10 Feb 2013


1 Comment




Written by the band’s financial adviser Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who is
widely credited from turning them from penniless rockers to multimillionaires
during a 40-year association, it lays bare how he made them become tax exiles,
reshaped the way tours were run, and ended the practice of the brown paper bag
stuffed with cash.


It might be that he prefers to read stories that are more in keeping with his
wild man image, or that Jagger didn’t expect such revelations from his old
friend. But he has certainly been upset by the publication of Prince Rupert’s
memoirs A Prince Among Stones.


“Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think your ex-bank manager should be
discussing your financial dealings and personal information in public,” he told
the Mail on Sunday, which is serialising the book.


“It just goes to show that well brought-up people don’t always display good
manners.”


Once dubbed the human calculator, Prince Rupert describes himself as a
combination of “bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny” to the Rolling Stones.




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He became the band’s adviser in 1968 when he was running a merchant bank, and
admits to becoming fascinated by Jagger, despite hating the Stones’ music.

The frontman had complained of being penniless, he realised that if they were
to avoid paying between 83 and 98 per cent in tax and surtax, they would need to
become tax exiles and move their base away from England.

It was around the time they were recording their best selling album Exile on
Main Street, one of the only album titles, the Prince said, to contain a
reference to tax planning in the title.

With “unaccounted-for cash delivered in a paper bag to the band and their
management the norm”, Prince Rupert began insisting they declare it, and slowly
began rewriting how tours operated.

Even he, though, had to admit defeat in the “all pervasive” practice of
ticket scalping, which allowed promoters to make huge profits by reselling
concert tickets at inflated prices.

He said: “Everyone I spoke to said: ‘There’s nothing you can do about that.


Do you want the Stones’ children to be kidnapped? You should be aware you are
dealing with difficult and dangerous people.”

Prince Rupert puts his success with the Stones down to hating their music and
refusing to be tempted by the rock and roll lifestyle.

He said: “All the time I worked with the Stones, I never changed my habits,
my clothes or my attitudes.

“I always aimed to maintain a strict discipline backstage and tried to see
that the band and the entourage did not get drunk or disorderly.

“Precisely because I was not a fan, I was able to view the band and what they
produced calmly, dispassionately, maybe even clinically – though never without
affection.”

The Prince and Jagger became great friends and it is believed that without
his guiding influence the Stones would not have lasted nearly as long as they
have.

The man nicknamed Rupie The Groupie by associates said the job with the
Stones – who had never heard of before – came at the right time as he was bored
at work, and he could not resist taking on the challenge of a skint rock band.
He and Jagger quickly clicked, but coming from different ends of the social
spectrum was not without its problems.

Prince Rupert recounts how he and his wife, Josephine, had been invited for
Christmas at Warwick Castle by friends, Lord and Lady Brooke. Having got Jagger
and Marianne Faithfull an invitation, the visit was a disaster, with Miss
Faithfull staying in bed 90 per cent of the time and Lade Brooke eventually
leaving early and tipping water into her bed.

He also described a concert in Hyde Park soon after the band’s guitarist,
Brian Jones, had been found dead in 1969. He said: “Mick read extracts from
Shelley’s Adonais. The effect was almost like the Nuremberg Rallies.”