Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, and a Mars bar: Rock ‘n’ roll’s most sordid myth
Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones became a phenomenon due to being perceived as a bad influence on the youth of the 1960s. Not because they encouraged them to listen to rock ‘n’ roll music, do drugs or get in trouble with the law, you understand. Instead, it’s because so many impressionable rock fans gave themselves yeast infections in the name of emulating their heroes.
Anyone who knows anything about the etiquette of rock stars knows the basics of this sordid little tale, or at least, they think they do. As the mid-’60s started to slide into the late ’60s, the British tabloid press found there was money to be made by claiming that the pop stars of the day were taking shitloads of drugs. This was mainly because the pop stars of the day were taking shitloads of drugs, but since this was still very illegal at the time, it was an open secret that none of them could admit to publicly.
This came to a head when a News of the World journalist claimed in print to have spent an evening in a club with a drugged-up Mick Jagger. The Stones’ singer, who knew he wasn’t at that club on that night, sued for the paper for libel. However, what he probably wanted kept on the down-low was the fact that it might not have been him that the writer was hanging out with, but it was almost certainly his Rolling Stones bandmate Brian Jones instead.
This was a pretty incredible act of hubris on the part of Jagger, because he may not have been the person at the club, but he, his band, his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull and pretty much their entire entourage were regular drug users. That’s all the News of the World had to prove in order to win the case, and when one of the photographers tasked with trailing the band spotted a large party being thrown at Keith Richards’ Redlands estate in Sussex, they tipped off the police, knowing that this would seal the deal in their favour.
The irony is that the most infamous story to come from that bust almost certainly didn’t even happen.
Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher led a raid of 18 officers on the party. Surprise, surprise, they found a bunch of drugs on the assorted revellers. However, very soon after the story broke, the party went down in history as this decadent, dionysian orgy with hot and cold running heroin, a gambling ring in the basement and, yes, the story that Jagger himself was found eating a Mars bar out of Faithfull’s unmentionables.
It’s gross. It’s an incredible story. It’s absolute bollocks. The truth of the matter was that Redlands was near a beach. The party had just returned from spending the afternoon there, and Faithfull was having a shower when Plod came to visit. Thus, she was found in the nude, covering herself up with a fur rug because of the intrusion of privacy. The party at Redlands had been nothing more sinister than a bunch of very cool people in their mid-20s having a lovely, somewhat domestic summer party.
However, The News of the World had to hype up the party as something much more disgusting and decadent than it actually was. That way, they could have a hope of making the example out of Jagger, Richards and friends that they wanted to. Thus, the rumours started to swirl, the Mars bar story stuck, and while both Jagger and Richards were sentenced to prison as a result of that fateful party, Faithfull arguably got the worst of it.
After all, in the public eye, Mick Jagger can be in that story and still be a dangerous, sexy rock star. Faithfull herself said that the story “destroyed” her. In any other case, I’d say print the legend as it’s much, much cooler than what actually happened. As the tragic story of Faithfull shows, sometimes those legends can have terrible repercussions, though.