Rock Music Studies ISSN: 1940-1159 (Print) 1940-1167 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrms20 Someday My Prince Will Come: The Rolling Stones and the Commodification of Rock Roy Shuker To cite this article: Roy Shuker (2015) Someday My Prince Will Come: The Rolling Stones and the Commodification of Rock, Rock Music Studies, 2:3, 226-238, DOI: 10.1080/19401159.2015.1093370 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19401159.2015.1093370 Published online: 29 Oct 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 499 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=rrms20 Download by: [46.3.193.245] Date: 24 December 2017, At: 16:29
Rock Music Studies, 2015 Vol. 2, No. 3, 226 238, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19401159.2015.1093370 Someday My Prince Will Come: The Rolling Stones and the Commodification of Rock Roy Shuker In 1965 the emergent English rhythm and blues band the Rolling Stones toured New Zealand and Australia, headlining a three-week package tour featuring overseas artists with support from local performers. They often played local halls, giving up to 13 performances a week to audiences sometimes of only a few hundred, with ticket prices between (Australian) $1.50 and $3.50. Their set drew heavily on R&B covers, and was a standard 20 minutes or so. For the tour the band received $12,500 per week, and promoter Harry M. Miller refused to pay the excess baggage charge to enable them to bring their own amplifiers. Subsequently, through a series of critically and commercially successful recordings, with an emphasis on self-written material, the Stones consolidated their status as the greatest rock and roll band in the world. In particular, I consider the key role played by merchant banker Prince Loewenstein in restructuring the Stones business model in the 1970s and 1980s. With Loewenstein as adviser, and with Jagger playing a leading role, the Stones developed a business structure designed to maximize income from touring, recording, and music publishing, and minimize their exposure to UK tax by living abroad and domiciling their companies in more advantageous territories such as the Netherlands. The Rolling Stones played their first gig in July 1962. In 2012 they celebrated 50 years as a band, having created a near mythic epic of survival and success. The enormous volume of journalism on the band and its members concentrates on the music, the drugs, and the personal relationships of the band members: sex, drugs, and rock and roll (Booth; Davis; Sandford). Alongside this is another narrative, less considered, of the Stones career as a business: an economy of rock. This is my focus here. I want to examine the band s career as indicative of the evolution of rock culture, especially its historical commodification. In particular, I consider the key role played by merchant banker Prince Rupert Loewenstein in restructuring the Stones business affairs in the 1970s and 1980s. As a key part of this, the band became one of the pioneers of stadium rock, headlining a series of major global tours. Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis
The Music Industry and the Stones 1960s Career Path Rock Music Studies 227 In popular discourse, the music industry is often regarded as simply the record companies, but they are only part of it. It is best conceived as a series of revenue/ income streams, whose relative importance has shifted over time (for a full discussion, see Hull, Hutchinson, and Glasser). In the 1960s, these revenue streams included income from live performance; royalties from recordings (singles, EPs, albums) and radio airplay; sheet music sales; television appearances; licensing deals and merchandising; the sale of music hardware; and the music press. In common with their contemporaries, the Stones in the mid-1960s created income largely from the first two of these: live performances, including tour revenue, and the sale of recordings. The band s early career exemplified what became 60s rock ideology, steeped in romanticism, and characterized by suffering for your art, embracing sacrifice, poverty (initially at least), and hard work. Group members would practice intensely individually and rehearse as a band, often living together in frequently squalid conditions in the process. A band developed live performance skills through one-off gigs and, once they were more established, club residencies. Management, initially often on an informal basis, would be central to obtaining gigs, looking for a recording contract, and setting up tours. Once a record deal was obtained, the regular release of recordings (especially singles) was vital to keep a band in the public eye, with live gigs and concert tours acting as promotion to facilitate or capitalize on chart success. In May 1963, Brian Jones, at this point still the acknowledged band leader, signed a three-year management deal with Eric Easton and Andrew Oldham (Norman 92 93). The older Easton was an established agent with experience of music management. Oldham s forte was publicity and media manipulation. He was to foster the Stones anti-establishment image as nonconformists, exploiting and building on the publicity generated by incidents such as the we piss anywhere, man episode and, more seriously, drug busts (Oldham 184 85; Egan 34). Oldham was also responsible for the iconic band shot on the cover of the Stones self-titled first album, The Rolling Stones, UK, Decca, April 1964), unusual in that it did not include the name of the band, and the accompanying hipster liner notes, which provoked controversy. Later in May, Brian Jones, again on behalf of the group, signed a three-year recording deal with Impact Sound and the group recorded their first single Come On. Bill Wyman claims: We got six per cent royalty [per record sold] from Impact, not knowing that Impact was receiving 14 per cent from Decca [which had a two-year recording contract with the band]. Eric and Andrew were also getting 25 per cent of our six per cent as a management fee. Still, we were not the first, nor the last, young band to fall prey to this old scam. (Wyman, Rolling 61; see also Egan; Norman 97)
228 R. Shuker On the positive side, by recording the band independently, then leasing the record masters back to Decca for production and distribution, Oldham retained the copyright to them (Norman 97). In the United Kingdom during this period, a band s repertoire typically began with cover versions of United States R&B, soul and blues recordings (see the early recordings of the Beatles, the Animals, and the Who, among others). This reflected the musicians own tastes, as well as those of their fans. In the case of the Stones, their first single, released in 1963, was a cover of Chuck Berry s Come On ; their first (four-track) EP, The Rolling Stones, a UK-only release in November 1963, consisted of four R&B covers; and of the 12 tracks on their first album, The Rolling Stones, released in the United Kingdom in April 1964, nine were covers. The Last Time, the first Jagger-Richards composition to reach #1 on the UK charts (in February 1965) was loosely based on the US gospel/soul group the Staple Singers recording of the traditional song, This May Be the Last Time, released in 1955 and arranged by Pop Staples. However, for continued success it was necessary to move past being simply another R&B covers band. Following the Beatles, writing and performing your own material was becoming essential to establishing credibility and authenticity; it also had a clear economic advantage, with the potential income from performing rights, primarily radio airplay, greatly exceeding record royalties. Oldham encouraged the Stones to write, focusing his efforts on Jagger and Richards, whose early efforts included Tell Me (on their debut album) and matured with the series of iconic singles through the mid to late 60s, including (I Can t Get No) Satisfaction, Paint It Black, and Jumpin Jack Flash. In mid-1965, Oldham attended the Columbia Records convention in Miami, where he met and was very impressed by Allen Klein, a New York music-industry accountant, who was there with his lawyer, Marty Machat. Subsequently, Oldham wrote to Klein, authorizing him to negotiate a new recording agreement on his behalf as the producer of the Stones and as the band s co-manager (though by now Oldham had fallen out with Easton, and the pair were in litigation). In return for his services Klein was to receive 20% of the gross compensation paid. Wyman (Rolling, 193) observes: We knew absolutely nothing about these arrangements ; this claim was subsequently confirmed by other band members. There was a general feeling, however, typified by Keith Richards in his later assessment, that the move to Klein was a positive one: I still think that it was the best move Oldham made to put us together with him. My attitude at the time was that Eric Easton, Andrew s partner and our agent, was just too tired. Onward. Whatever happened later with Allen Klein, he was brilliant at generating cash. And he was also spectacular at first in blasting through the record companies and tour managers who had been overpaying themselves and being inattentive to business. (Richards 178) Money for the purchase of houses for band members was readily forthcoming, and the next tour of the United States, under Klein s management, included private
Rock Music Studies 229 planes and more thorough and visible promotion of the band. As Richards observed, It was a paternalistic form of management that obviously doesn t rub anymore these days, but it was still flying then (179). Only later would the inherent difficulties emerge. On 26 July 1965, Jagger s 22nd birthday, the Stones attended a meeting in Oldham s office, then went on to a meeting with Klein at Decca. A belligerent Klein, who had now effectively replaced Easton, got a $1.25 million advance from Decca for the Stones new recording contract (Richards 178 79; Norman 75), although where much of this went later became much debated and litigated. The Stones each got an initial advance against royalties of 2,500 each, attractive at the time but a pittance compared with the revenue their recordings had been generating. Television and Touring in the 1960s In addition to rehearsing and recording, between 1963 and 1966 the Stones were undertaking a grinding schedule of live performances, including extensive tours and numerous television appearances, notably on Thank Your Lucky Stars, Ready Steady Go!, and Top of the Pops. (Wyman, Rolling, is very thorough on the details of these; see also Norman; Egan). Their first such appearance, on Thank Your Lucky Stars, 7 June 1963, was due to Easton s contacts; they mimed Come On, which had been released on the same day (Norman 100 02). At Oldham s direction, the band reluctantly compromised by wearing the matching stage suits then required by such programs, a practice they later abandoned as their success ensured they were in regular demand by the shows. Although on this occasion the Stones did not go down well with many viewers, the performance contributed to lifting the record to number 21 in the UK charts. Such appearances were important for gaining wider exposure, in most cases through playing the band s latest single release. The Stones made a further 12 appearances on Thank Your Lucky Stars, in addition to 20 on Ready Steady Go! On 1 January 1964 they performed their new single I Wanna Be Your Man on the debut broadcast of Top of the Pops, and made a further five appearances on what became the UK s longest-running chart television show. Tours during the early to mid-1960s were also essentially about promotion: capitalizing on a performers latest single or album release. Between September 1963 and October 1966, the Stones took part in nine tours within the UK, and also toured Europe and North America (in June 1964, for three weeks, including two days recording at Chess Records). Two tours of Australia and New Zealand typify the nature of such undertakings. In January February 1965 the Stones toured New Zealand and Australia, headlining a three-week package tour featuring overseas artists (the Newbeats; Roy Orbison) with support from local performers (notably Ray Columbus and the Invaders; see Columbus, for his perceptions of the tour and the Stones). In his autobiography, promoter Harry M. Miller recalls that:
230 R. Shuker I signed the Stones for $12 500 a week, for which they had to give up to thirteen performances a week, and paid for the accommodation and economy air fares for five Stones and three [tour] managers. Over a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand it added up to an outlay of almost $100 000, but we grossed about $250 000 at the box office. Perhaps I was a little mean when I refused to allow them to bring their own amplifiers as excess baggage. They can bring their guitars but that s all I m paying for, I told their manager Andrew Oldham. We ve got perfectly good amplifiers in Australia. Christ, who are we working for Scrooge? said Oldham down the phone. We re all working for our bank managers, Andrew. And if we don t keep a rein on costs this whole business is going to blow. (Miller 128 29; see also Oldham 175 77) The Stones often played local town halls, giving up to 13 performances a week, with two shows per venue, except for three shows in Auckland on 6 February. They played to audiences sometimes of only a few hundred, with ticket prices between (Australian) $1.50 and $3.50. Wyman claims the total audience to have been around 100,000, with the larger Sydney concerts accounting for a sizable proportion of this (Wyman, Rolling). Their set was a standard 20 minutes or so, opening with Not Fade Away and closing with It s All Over Now ; they also drew heavily on R&B covers. A similar package tour in 1966, also promoted by Miller, followed the same format, with the Stones supported by the Searchers and various local bands (notably Max Merritt and the Meteors). There was now a greater emphasis on the band s own compositions, notably their number one single ( I Can t Get No) Satisfaction (released in the UK in June 1965), which had become their standard show closer. The venues and the audiences were larger, reflecting the Stones chart success in the period between the two tours. Nonetheless, the band was seeing slim returns for their labor: Wyman notes that we grossed $59,136; UK agent Tito Burns; $5,913; managers Klein and Andrew each received $5,321. The Stones after expenses each earned $7,063 but we didn t receive it at this time (Wyman, Rolling 220). The tour came back through Europe and the United States, and the Stones did not return to the UK until November 1966. They were exhausted and did not tour again internationally until late 1969. Someday My Prince Will Come As Mick Jagger later observed (to the American business magazine Fortune): When we first started out there really wasn t any money in rock n roll. Obviously there was someone who made money, but it wasn t an act. Even if you were very successful, you basically got paid nothing (Serwer 42). While this claim has an element of selfmythologizing, consolidating what had become an established part of 60s rock mythology the exploited artist it is consistent with the available information on the Stones earnings during the period. In spite of successful tours, with sold-out concerts, along with record sales and considerable chart success, the band were still (relatively) broke in 1968, with a looming UK tax bill. As Norman puts it:
Rock Music Studies 231 In terms of opulent houses, flash cars, unlimited clothes and expensive holidays, all five Stones looked as though they must have millions in the bank. Actually, none of them had direct control over his earnings and none not even their keen-witted, calculating leader, the one-time economics student [Jagger] knew exactly how much wealth the band had accumulated and continued to accumulate under Allen Klein s aegis. Instead, a system had evolved, born jointly of young rock stars impatience with mundane details and Klein s calculated policy of keeping the talent happy. In those pre-credit-card days, when one of them needed money, their office sent a request to Klein s ABKCO organization in New York. (Norman, Mick Jagger 325 26) It was, however, increasingly difficult to get money from Klein, and the cash flow from New York for the running of the Stones London office had become increasingly problematic (Norman, Mick Jagger 327). Oldham, wanting out of the music industry and increasingly distanced from the Stones, was in negotiation for a pay-off from Klein, and had also started legal proceedings against the manager over where the Decca advance from 1965 and subsequent royalty income had been going to (Oldham 318). The 25-year-old Mick Jagger, increasingly concerned that the Stones were still not seeing a decent profit from their music, decided to get a member of the Establishment to manage his money: he chose a 35-year-old banker descended from Bavarian aristocrats, Prince Rupert Loewenstein. Towards the end of 1968 Jagger asked a friend, the art dealer Christopher Gibbs, to suggest someone to advise the Stones on their financial affairs. Gibbs tried, unsuccessfully, to get City of London (the financial sector) firms of accountants and solicitors interested, then he asked Loewenstein. The Prince had already briefly met Jagger socially at a party in Chelsea: it was one of the occasions when we walked into the room and found everybody stoned. And one of the people whom I had tripped over was Mick (66). At a meeting in the autumn of 1968 (the precise date is not recorded by Loewenstein nor is it identified in the various Jagger biographies), at Jagger s Chelsea Embankment house, they clicked on a personal level and discussed the banker taking on a role as business adviser: Essentially, the band were handcuffed on the one side by their contract with Allen Klein, and on the other to Decca Records. My job was going to be to allow them to escape, Houdini-like, from both with the minimum damage (Loewenstein 86). He also realized that if a way could be found to get past the dodgy business practices which surrounded the touring business, there was a lot of money to be made, although at the time the artists were making no money out of touring (Loewenstein 87). With Loewenstein as adviser, and with Jagger playing a leading role, the Stones invented a business model designed to maximize income from touring, recording, and music publishing, and to minimize their exposure to UK tax by living abroad and domiciling their companies in more advantageous territories such as the Netherlands. Loewenstein would restructure the band as a blue-chip company with each band member (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and, eventually Ronnie Wood, who joined in 1975) as a partner. Mick Taylor, who had
232 R. Shuker replaced Brian Jones in May 1969, was on salary. Within the umbrella company, Loewenstein incorporated a series of subsidiary companies that would handle the different aspects of the group s activities. Jagger latter said of the structure: They all have their different income streams like any other company. They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock (Serwer). The Stones went on to become the most profitable rock act in the world. Initially, Loewenstein undertook an assessment of the band s business affairs, going through every single document and analyzing the Stones contracts: After reviewing a few of the basic documents I realised why the Stones would not have received the money which Mick had questioned at our first meeting. It would have gone to Klein and therefore they would have depended on what he gave them, as opposed to what the record company or the publishing company did. They were completely in the hands of a man who was like an old-fashioned Indian moneylender. (Loewenstein 89 90) It took until the end of 1970, when the Stones existing contracts came to an end, to work through the mass of papers and deal with the various recording companies involved. Especially pressing was the income tax question. Due to financial arrangements made by Klein, the band had not paid tax in the UK for almost five years, but with the looming split from him they had become aware of a very large unpaid tax bill. Looking at British stars who had moved abroad like Noel Coward and Richard Burton, Loewenstein suggested the Stones would have to abandon their UK residence: If they did not do this, they could be paying between 83 and 98 per cent of their profits in British income tax and surtax. He selected the South of France as a suitable location, and, drawing on influential contacts there, he got the band into the Villa Nellcôte, paying a negotiated income tax to the Alpes-Maritimes authorities (Loewenstein 99 101). Keith Richards later acknowledged the band s debt to Loewenstein: I take my hat off to Rupert for figuring a way out of massive debt for us. It was Rupert s advice that we become non-resident the only way we could get back on our feet financially (289). The shift and the recording of Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones Records, May 1969) on the French Riviera added to their rebel image with the romance of a group driven out by the establishment. Save for the occasional studio track and live concert, the Stones would not record in the UK again. As a last hurrah for their British fans, before leaving for France, the Stones did a brief UK tour in March 1969, notable for being the last playing a series of smaller venues (Greenfield). Recording, Royalties, and Branding Loewenstein s other major task was securing the Stones freedom from Decca and Klein, a process that was both protracted and costly. A first agreement in 1972 gave the Stones US$1 million and Klein s ABKCO the copyrights to the band s
Rock Music Studies 233 60s recordings, another album (Love You Live, Rolling Stone s Records, September 1977, fulfilled this), and two tracks from the Sticky Fingers album (1971), recorded earlier when he was managing the band. Nonetheless, litigation continued for another 18 years, and was essentially a series of compromises. With the lessons from Klein in mind, Loewenstein was also instrumental in gaining greater control for the Stones over their recordings and the income from these. In 1971, the Stones started their own label and signed a distribution deal with Atlantic. The agreement enabled the band to retain the rights to subsequent albums and negotiate new contracts with EMI, Columbia, Virgin, and Universal over the next three decades. In 1985, Loewenstein negotiated a deal with CBS Records giving the band US$25 million for four albums, along with the rights to their Atlantic back catalog. Although the Stones have not had a Top Ten UK single since 1981 ( Start Me Up ) and have never released a blockbuster album, they have been steady catalog and compilation sellers for almost 40 years. It is actually income from touring and publishing, rather than recordings, that has given the band their greatest revenues: Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording. It s just tradition. There s no rhyme or reason. The people who wrote songs were probably better business people than the people who sang them were (Jagger, in Serwer). Richards told Fortune when asked what his greatest source of income was: Performing rights. Every time it s played on the radio. I go to sleep and make money let s put it that way (Serwer). In 2002, it was estimated that, since 1989, the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership had received $56 million from songs being played on the radio and in public venues, as well as being used in advertising and movies (Serwer). In 1969 Jagger approached London s Royal College of Art with the aim of commissioning images for the band. A meeting with the artist John Pasche inspired one particular logo: Face to face with him [Jagger], the first thing you were aware of was the size of his lips and mouth. It was Pasche s Tongue and Lip (The Guardian) design that would initially adorn the Sticky Fingers album (Rolling Stones Records (The Guardian), April 1971). Copyrighted by Loewenstein, it would subsequently be used on all Stones-branded material, and has become the most recognizable musical logo in history. Loewenstein was also behind the band s decision to license the Jagger-Richards composition Start Me Up to Microsoft for their Windows 95 campaign, for a reported US$4 million. Similarly, Apple brought the rights to use She s a Rainbow to launch their new computer range. Adding another lucrative revenue stream, the band have licensed their songs more than 200 times to films, according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), second only to Elvis Presley. Stadium Rock While these various initiatives were important in consolidating the band s financial position, Loewenstein s greatest impact on the Stones was through the manner in which he transformed their tours into meticulously organized and audited, highly
234 R. Shuker profitable undertakings. The 1969 US tour saw the first indications of a more organized (and profitable) approach. In addition to getting the band out of the UK, Loewenstein had recommended that the Stones tour America as soon as possible, to generate badly needed cash flow. Jagger, who now took the leading role on behalf of the band, agreed, and a US tour was scheduled to begin in early November 1969. Jagger was determined that Klein not be part of the tour arrangements, and instead he hired Ron Schneider. With Loewenstein, Schneider jointly administered a newly created company, Stone Productions, into which all tour earnings were to be paid (Norman, Mick Jagger 362). Rather than use a locally based tour promoter, the band had their own promoter (the recently hired Schneider) dealing directly with each of the venues. In this new approach the venue owner was offered 75% of the gate, but paid 50% of the remaining share up front (in advance), an approach which gave the band the necessary funds to mount the tour. The 1969 tour (see Booth, for a fuller account) was the first in which the Stones exercised overall direction of every facet of the operation, using the best professionals available to handle their own lighting and sound systems, stage decoration, and security. Their new company, Stone Productions, controlled the sale of programs, t-shirts, and other merchandise at each venue. Loewenstein insisted on rigorous auditing of tour expenses and revenues, closely regulating the supply of complimentary tickets and the cost of the band s entourage, and developed a precise hierarchy backstage to cut down on freeloaders: it was just like a court: rivals, whispering, grades of status granting access, with others being used to fetch and carry (Loewenstein 128). The Stones rehearsed for two weeks in Los Angeles, prior to the 28-show tour beginning at Colorado University Sports Arena on 7 November with a crowd of 7,000. The use of such large sporting venues was a feature of the tour. Along with Led Zeppelin and American band Grand Funk Railroad, the Stones were establishing the template for arena rock, with the audience now a commodity which could be more closely policed and exploited economically (Waksman). The band now played for one hour and 15 minutes. The Let it Bleed (UK, Decca, December 1969; USA, London, November 1969) album was released to coincide with the start of the tour, along with a compilation of earlier recordings, Through the Past, Darkly. There was also a 14-track promotional album for radio stations (Norman 365). The timing of such releases, along with accompanying publicity and music-press coverage, was to become standard in later tours. The tour was filmed by the Maysles Brothers, with Gimme Shelter, released in 1970, providing a further revenue stream. Steel Wheels The Steel Wheels Tour of 1989, the band s first in seven years since the relatively short 1981 Still Life American Tour, marked the beginning of a new phase of concert presentation and promotion, with accompanying increased profits. Canadian promoter Michael Cohl guaranteed Loewenstein and the band US$40 million for
Rock Music Studies 235 40 shows. Lowenstein brokered the offer, along with one from Bill Graham, who had previously handled the Stones tours, with the band, who were then recording in Montserrat. Following Loewenstein s judgment that Michael comes out best, Cohl was chosen. His advance was predicated on his handling the rights to handle not only the concerts, but all sponsorship, merchandising, and media exploitation. (Loewenstein 191 93). The band spent several months rehearsing in Canada to avoid American taxes, before the opening concert, a strategy that became their standard practice. The tour was sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser beer, setting the pattern for future corporate involvement. The Steel Wheels logo branded merchandise from US$450 bomber jackets to US$5 bandanas. Exclusive television rights, including a cable pay-per-view deal, were parceled off, and Cohl produced a giant-screen IMAX concert film. A new studio album, Steel Wheels (CBS, September 1989), was released to accompany the tour. A central part of Steel Wheels was the ambitious stage set. Cohl later told Fortune magazine (Serwer): First and foremost, the show itself was the seminal, watershed point. When you look at what a stadium show was pre-steel Wheels, it was a bit of a scrim, and a big, wide, flat piece of lumber, and that was it. The band turned a stadium into a theatre. It all started with Mick. He simply said, We have to fill the end space. It was complicated to the third power and expensive to the fifth. But it worked. This was an expensive undertaking, but it added to the spectacle that was increasingly the basis for the Stones in concert, and it was the forerunner of the increasingly complex stage sets used on later tours. All this made the tour and the accompanying Urban Jungle dates in Europe the following year the most financially successful tour in rock history up until then, grossing over US$260 million. Subsequent tours proved even more lucrative. Each was characterized by being launched with a new album or back catalog compilation release, with a subsequent live album documenting the tour, put out arguably as a form of souvenir after its conclusion: Voodoo Lounge 1994 95, grossing US$370 million world-wide. Bridges to Babylon/No Security 1998 99, grossing US$390 million worldwide. Accompanying album: No Security, November 1998. Licks, 2002; $87.9 million in the USA and a further $221 million elsewhere; double live album Live Licks, November 2004. In 2005 06, the initial North American leg of their Bigger Bang World tour sold 1.2 million tickets and generated US$162 million in revenue. The band was increasingly relying on a mix of their familiar back catalog and an elaborate stage set: The 90 ft high, 285 ft wide steel-constructed stage, weighing in at 300,000 tonnes, looked like a cross between the Guggenheim and an airport lounge, and is said
236 R. Shuker to be the largest and most expensive ever assembled. Giant screens showed an animated video of exploding molten rocks, depicting the original big bang. All that was missing was a commentary by Professor Stephen Hawking. There were jets of fire, fireworks and inflatables. Halfway through the show, the entire central section of the stage lurched forward like a carnival float, carrying the band 100 yards to a second stage located in the middle of the sacred turf of what is normally the Red Sox baseball field. (Nigel Williamson on the Boston concert More Bangs for Your Buck, The Observer, 28 Aug. 2005, qtd in Pattie 152 53) As part of the tour, the band played to crowds of 40,000 plus at stadium concerts in Auckland and Wellington. To stage these, more than 300 tonnes of equipment had to be transported to New Zealand in 32 containers by four jumbo jets. In total, the tour generated a gross of US$558 million and saw an average concert audience of 32,500 people ( The Rolling Stones, UNCUT). Further income was generated by recordings released to coincide with the tour, and the Martin Scorsese-directed Shine a Light, documenting the tour-ending New York concert at the Beacon Theatre. The Prince Abdicates Loewenstein describes the various roles he performed for the Rolling Stones between 1970 and 2007 as a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny, a little bit of agent, business manager, and accountant. He claims that, if he met with resistance from them, he would reply, What do you care? You re selling a business product. In his memoir Life, and in earlier interviews (Serwer; Bockris), Keith Richards variously describes Loewenstein as very pukka [British slang for upright], trustworthy, the mastermind of our set-up. He is a great financial mind for the market. He plays it like I play guitar. Richards further emphasized his trust of Loewenstein s judgment when he said: As long as there s a smile on Rupert s face, I m cool (Richards, 287; Serwer, 47). In part due to health issues, but also frustrated by his inability since the early 2000s to persuade the Stones to pursue a takeover deal with an organization within the peripheries of the entertainment industry (Loewenstein 224 27), Loewenstein retired from his role with the band in March 2008. He had remained on friendly terms with Jagger until the release of his autobiography, A Prince Among the Stones, which prompted the singer to say, Call me old fashioned, but I don t think your ex-bank manager should be discussing your financial dealings and personal information in public (Mail Online, February 9, 2013).Lowenstein died in early June 2014. The band has stayed in the limelight despite taking some years off from touring and recording. Stories about their personal lives, and milestones such as Jagger s 70th birthday, have intermittently kept them on the front pages of the tabloids. In 2012, they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first gig (as the Rollin Stones). The occasion saw the release of yet another career-spanning greatest hits collection,
GRRR! with the bulk of the tracks drawn from their pre-1977 recordings. Indicative of contemporary marketing, the album was released in a range of vinyl and digital formats (The Rolling Stones 50). A documentary, Crossfire Hurricane, offered an officially sanctioned history of the band. A well-received first-time performance at the iconic Glastonbury Festival in the UK in June 2013 was followed by a series of sold-out concerts in London and New York and an international tour begun in 2014. This was cut short by the death of Jagger s partner, fashion designer L Wren Scott. This prompted considerable press speculation about the cost to the insurers of postponed concerts, yet again indicating the commodity status of rock music. The tour recommenced later in 2014. The Stones business model became a template for other large-scale acts, especially with the increased importance post-2000 of the live-music-sector revenue stream, with the collapse of record sales in the digital era. As Richards observes of the post-1989 period, touring was the only way to survive. Record royalties barely paid overheads; you couldn t tour behind a record like the old days. Mega-tours were, in the end, the bread and butter of keeping this machinery running (486). The continued popularity of the band and their ability to fill stadiums on sold-out tours reflects a combination of their undoubted contribution to the classic rock canon, their encapsulation of the romanticism of the 60s, and the status of Jagger as a Peter Pan figure and Richards as the great survivor. At the same time, it is their business model, engineered primarily by Loewenstein, that has enabled them to become the most economically successful act in rock history. Speaking to the BBC at Glastonbury in 2013, Mick Jagger observed: Everyone wants to have done more things. It s slightly intellectually undemanding being a rock singer, but you make the best of it. With the help of his Glimmer Twin, and Prince Rupert, the best of it has been rather impressive. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. References Rock Music Studies 237 Bockris, Victor. Keith Richards: The Biography. London: Penguin, 1993. Print. Booth, Stanley. The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones. 1984. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2012. Print. Columbus, Ray. Ray Columbus the Modfather. The Life and Times of a Rock n roll Pioneer. London: Penguin, 2011. Print. Davis, Stephen. Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. Revd edn. London: Aurum Press, 2006. Print. Egan, Sean. The Rough Guide to the Rolling Stones. London: Rough Guides, 2006. Print. Greenfield, Robert. Ain t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2014. Print. The Guardian (2008), V&A Buys Original Rolling Stones Logo. 2nd September. Print.
238 R. Shuker Hull, G., T.W. Hutchinson, and R. Glasser. The Music Business and Recording Industry: Delivering Music in the 21 st Century. 3rd edn. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Print. Langley, William. Mick Jagger: The Rolling Stone who Changed Music. The Telegraph (London) 26 July 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rolling-stones/10192279/ Mick-Jagger Loewenstein, Rupert. A Prince Among the Stones: That Business with the Rolling Stones and Other Adventures. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print. Miller, Harry M.; as told to Denis O Brien. My Story. Melbourne: MacMillan, 1983. Norman, Philip. Mick Jagger. London: HarperCollins, 2012. Print. Oldham, Andrew. 2Stoned. London: Random House, 2000. Print. Pattie, David. Rock Music in Performance. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Richards, Keith with James Fox. Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010. Print. The Rolling Stones: Crossfire Hurricane. Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2102. DVD. The Rolling Stones 50. London: Thames & Hudson. Print. The Rolling Stones. UNCUT July: 48 57. (Main story by Paul Sexton.) Print. Sandford, Christopher. The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print. Serwer, Andy. The Rolling Stones: Inside Rock s Billion Dollar Band. Fortune 7 Oct. 2002: 39 47. Print. Shine a Light. Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2008. DVD. Waksman, Steve. This Ain t the Summer of Love. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: U of California P, 2009. Print. Wyman, Bill with Ray Coleman. Stone Alone: The Story of a Rock n Roll Band. London: Penguin, 1991. Print. Wyman, Bill with Richard Havers. Rolling with the Stones. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2002. Print. Notes on Contributor Roy Shuker is an adjunct professor in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His publications include Understanding Popular Music Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 4 th edition, 2012); and Wax Trash and Vinyl Junkies: Record Collecting as a Social Practice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). He has been following the Rolling Stones since first seeing them on their New Zealand tour in 1966.