The Rolling Stones' Redlands bust
Most notably, the traditionally conservative newspaper The Times published an op-ed by William Rees-Mogg asking Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?, in which he criticised the prosecutions as unfounded and unnecessary.
By the late 1960s, drugs were common in the British music industry, and in 1966 the ITV documentary A Boy Called Donovan publicised his use of marijuana to the wider world.
London Life campaigned against Michael Hollingshead of Harvard University, who researched psychedelic drugs and introduced many well-known individuals, such as Timothy Leary, to LSD.
[2] The increased focus of the police on celebrity drug use led, in author Peter Walsh's words, to "an unholy" alliance between the News of the World and Scotland Yard.
[7] By the late 1960s, argues Bingham, the paper had moved from traditional court reporting towards a more intrusive form of journalism based on the scoop as its centrepiece.
[6] Always, says journalist Paul Trynka, "well known for its disapproval and comprehensive coverage of all kinds of sex and sleaze", the paper "fired the opening salvo of the inter-generational war on Sunday 29 January".
[14] 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".
[note 5] Further, argues Trynka, Jones had been discussing marijuana, but the paper had deliberately misquoted him as acid had been illegal since the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1965 and thus strengthened the newspaper's story as to what rock stars such as the Stones' were assumed to be doing.
Trynka suggests that the misidentification of Jagger for Jones may have been accidental, although acknowledges that "insiders like Marianne Faithfull believe that too was cynical and deliberate: as the figurehead of the Stones, Mick's celebrity would help sell more papers".
Members of the group were followed, vans were parked outside their houses at all hours and they believed telephone lines were bugged as they heard clicks and echoes when they made calls.
On the evening of Saturday 11 February the paper's news desk received a call: 'it was enormously fortunate', recalled the editor later, 'that it happened to be an informant.
[18] Robert Fraser was an art dealer and nicknamed "Groovy Bob" by Terry Southern on account of the gatherings he organised, which included celebrities such as the Beatles, the Stones, photographer Michael Cooper, designer Christopher Gibbs, Marianne Faithfull, Dennis Hopper, William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger.
No arrests were made at the time, but Jagger, Richards and their friend art dealer Robert Fraser were subsequently charged with drug offences.
[9] The police discovered little sign of illegality: a few roaches, amphetamine pills from Jagger's Italian supplier, and Fraser was found in possession of heroin.
[note 10] However, it subsequently emerged that the police entered what Faithfull describes as a quiet domestic scene; "How the Mars bar got into the story, I don't know ...
[9] The News of the World reported "with particular gusto", says author Fred Goodman, that when the police entered Faithfull had just had a shower and had had to put a fur rug over herself.
[26] She later described how, as a side effect of their comedowns, they kept breaking into laughter while the police searched the house, "collecting sticks of incense and miniature bars of hotel soap".
In any case, he says, the fact that the News of the World somehow knew that Harrison had been at the party earlier in the day indicated to the Stones that it was them that the police wanted to catch, not the member of the more family-friendly Beatles.
[17] Instead, Allen Klein attended to the publicity surrounding the arrests, coordinating the group's defence, while the band went to Morocco to escape the press.
[26] Oldham later explained that "I was already not dealing with a completely full deck, but if you have five policemen in your house, you’ve got a good reason to think you're going to end up in jail.
[33] Jagger ignored the fact that it had been Richards who had organised the party originally and who, argues Trynka had chosen to invite unknown outsiders such as Schneiderman into their close-knit group.
"[33] Trouble followed them to Spain, where a Málaga restaurant refused to accept their Diners Club card leading to Guardia Civil involvement.
[38] The first trial – the only one involving a prison sentence[39] – resulted from a February 1967 police raid on Redlands, Richards's Sussex estate, where he and some friends, including Jagger, were spending the weekend.
[36] In her autobiography, Faithfull says that up until this point, they felt that "a mysterious and menacing enemy pursued us at every turn"; there was a degree of paranoia on account of Jones' bust the day of their release.
[44] The following month the Times carried a full-page advertisement stating that "The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice", which, comments Barnes, "further outraged the establishment", to the extent that it was discussed in the House of Commons.
[36] On appeal, Richards' sentence was overturned and Jagger's was amended to a conditional discharge (although he ended up spending one night inside London's Brixton Prison).
Klein became angry, however, when Marianne Faithfull produced some covertly-stored hash: incensed at the trouble he had gone to gain their release, he threw the container out of his window and flushed the drugs down the toilet.
'"[26] Six months after the arrest of Jagger and Richards, the Stones released the single "We Love You", intended as a message of appreciation to their fans and other musicians for supporting them throughout the controversy.
The single featured fellow musicians John Lennon and Paul McCartney on backing vocals and received positive reviews from music critics.
[56] Anthony Barnes, writing in the Independent, suggests that "to some it is a defining moment in history, the point at which a moribund establishment started to disintegrate.
