Start Me Up: How the Rolling Stones Started Making Money and Never Stopped
In honor of the Rolling Stones’ 60th anniversary in 2022, as well as the 1 year anniversary of Charlie Watts’ passing (08/23/21), here is a feature piece I wrote as my senior capstone project for the Journalism+Design department at The New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, which explores the innovations the Stones brought to the music industry over the course of their career.
In a 1975 interview with People Magazine, Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, said that he’d “rather be dead than singing “Satisfaction” when I’m 45.” At the time of this interview, Jagger was almost 32 years old and on his 8th US tour with the Stones. Today, well beyond double the age he was when he made those remarks, the Rolling Stones just wrapped up a stadium tour across Europe, celebrating the 60th anniversary of their formation. And, of course, “Satisfaction” was on the setlist, closing their set as it did for nearly all of their shows over the past 20 years.
Obviously, the Stones’ legendary music is part of why they have enjoyed such enduring success over the years. But their continued relevance is no accident. The Rolling Stones are a business, and a very good business at that, comprising multiple revenue streams: music publishing, licensing, film, merchandising, and, of course, touring. Per Billboard, their No Filter Tour, which began in 2017, sold 2.9 million tickets over 58 shows and grossed $546.5 million. Its last leg—their return to the stage after the COVID-19 pandemic kept them off the road for nearly two years—was named the top tour of 2021. I spoke to Rob Sheffield, author and writer at Rolling Stone Magazine, who has written prolifically about the Rolling Stones. Sheffield points out that “bands were always run as a business before, but they were run as a really bad business.”
“All the blues guys that [the Rolling Stones] grew up idolizing, they all got completely ripped off by managers, by labels, by promoters, by everybody,” Sheffield says. “And the Stones were like, ‘If [the band is] going to be run like a business and somebody’s going to be making tons of money, it may as well be us.” And make money, they did. Today, the combined net worth of all current members, including drummer Charlie Watts, who died in August 2021, is estimated at $1.45 billion.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones, the band’s founding members, played their first gig as the Rolling Stones at London’s Marquee Club on Oxford Street on July 12th, 1962. According to Richards, the name was thought of off the cuff by Jones when he called to put an ad in a small music magazine Jazz News. The person on the other end of the phone asked him what his group’s name was, and Jones’ gaze is said to have landed on a Muddy Waters record lying around the three boys’ filthy flat in London’s Chelsea neighborhood. The name would prove fitting for a band so deeply inspired by American blues musicians in their early days. It is a love of the blues that brought Mick Jagger and Keith Richards together in the first place.
Jagger and Richards went to primary school together in Dartford, Kent, before Jagger moved 5 miles away to Wilmington, Kent in 1954. They had a chance reunion on October 17, 1961, at the Dartford train station as Jagger was waiting for the train to attend classes at the London School of Economics (LSE). In his 2010 autobiography Life, Richards recalled that Jagger was holding mail-order R&B albums from Chess Records by some of Richards’ favorite artists like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley. Richards considered stealing them before recognizing Jagger. The records revealed a mutual interest in blues music, which led the young adults to rekindle their friendship. They then formed an amateur band with a mutual friend, Dick Taylor, before Brian Jones invited them to form a band with him.
The band’s first lineup consisted of Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Brian Jones on guitar, Dick Taylor on the bass, and Mick Avory, who would later be part of the Kinks, on the drums. Six months later, Taylor and Avory were replaced with Bill Wyman on the bass and Charlie Watts on the drums, and on January 14, 1963, they played their first gig with the classic sixties lineup they became known for.
BUILDING A BAD BOY IMAGE
The Rolling Stones’ first smart business move could be considered their careful attention to branding from the get-go. While they might not have intentionally done so, in their early days as a group, the Stones harnessed the power of establishing who you are as a band and sticking to it. The Rolling Stones were bad boys. A March 1964 headline in the Melody Maker, a popular British weekly music magazine, read, “Would you let your sister go with a Rolling Stone?” emphasizing their corrupt image was in the media, which the band accentuated through their scruffy appearance, suggestive songs and run-ins with the law.
This reputation was not originally part of the plan. In the early 1960s, following The Beatles’ success, bands often adopted the Fab Four’s formulaic look, particularly their matching, clean suits. An early photoshoot of the Stones shows them emulating The Beatles, posing nicely in matching houndstooth blazers, black pants, and a tie. Their hair is of a Beatle-esque length and combed. Their manager at the time was Andrew Lood Oldham, a skinny blonde kid who had previously worked for the Beatles. Oldham’s approach quickly changed into leaning into all the ways the Rolling Stones were not like the Beatles. So while the Beatles sang sweet love songs in matching suits and received MBEs [Member of the Order of the British Empire] from the Queen, the Stones wore mismatched regular clothes for promotional shots and shows and kept their hair long and unkempt while singing the blues. Rather than standing still while playing their instruments and cooing perfect callback harmonies, they had a lead singer who moved in a way reminiscent of Elvis’ provocative dancing, gyrating his hips and shuffling his feet in an off-putting, almost animalistic way.
Still, journalists loved to compare the two bands. In a 1964 interview in Ireland, a journalist asked baby-faced Jagger how he compared his group to the Beatles, though not before subtly insulting Keith Richards’ appearance by saying, “Keith, it’s obvious that you don’t get your hair cut, but you do get it trimmed from time to time?” Jagger, eyeing the camera flirtatiously and sporting his signature grin, answers, “I don’t know, how do you compare it with the Beatles? I don’t compare it at all, you know. There’s no point.” The interviewer doubles down, asking him if he thinks they are flat out better than the Beatles. “At what? You know, it’s not the same group. So we just do what we want, and they do what they want, and there’s no point going on comparing. You can prefer us to them or them to us.” Jagger concludes his point by smiling at the camera and adding, “It’s diplomatic, you see.” Very diplomatic indeed.
A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP
Kory Grow, a staff writer at Rolling Stone who has written about the Stones several times and interviewed members of the band, tells me that he thinks a lot of the ways modern boy bands are marketed take their rooting in the individual personalities each member of the Stones displayed, such as One Direction and BTS, “where you see the way that they’re presented to fans as this unit. Everybody with their own unique personality, but they all work together.” But two members, in particular, have really influenced modern band dynamics: the Glimmer Twins, otherwise known as the songwriting partnership between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and one of rock’s most enduring love/hate relationships.
The “glimmer twins” is a pseudonym Jagger and Richards originally started using in the 1970s when they started acting as producers on Stones albums. It originated during a boat trip in Rio de Janeiro that Jagger and Richards took with their girlfriends in the late 1960s. According to Richards, who was dressed in “a diaphanous djellaba, Mexican shoes and a tropical army hat,” the upper-class English passengers on the boat discovered who they were and became “perturbed,” presumably because of how weary older English individuals were of the Stones.
“They started asking us questions: ‘What are you really trying to do?’ and ‘Do try to explain what this whole thing is about!’ We never answered them and, after a few days, one woman stepped forward from the group and said, ‘We’ve been asking you for days and you just won’t say. Can’t you give us just a glimmer?’ Mick turned to me and said, ‘We’re the Glimmer Twins.’”
The Glimmer Twins have presented the world with two archetypal rockstar figures, one being the charismatic lead singer and the other being the laid-back guitarist. Since the Stones, many bands have attempted to recreate that duo within themselves — Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith calling themselves the Toxic Twins and Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee of Motley Crue who called themselves the Terror Twins. Every band wants a Mick and a Keith.
The highs and lows of their relationship add to the fascination people have for the band. The two were friends in the 1960s, and even as Jagger became somewhat of a jet-setting celebrity in the 1970s while Richards descended deeper into heroin addiction, the camaraderie was still there. When Richards was arrested in Toronto in 1977 for heroin possession, Jagger stood by him during his trial. When a member of the press asked “Why did you come over Mick?” “Cause I wanted to be with Keith!” he answered without hesitation. In the 1980s, however, the partnership really soured. The music video for “One Hit (To the Body)”, a single from their 1986 album Dirty Work, sees Jagger and Richards engage in some scuffling that doesn’t feel all that forced. In his 2010 autobiography Life, Richards certainly did not shy away from exposing his difficult relationship with Jagger, revealing nicknames like “Her Majesty” or “Bitchy Brenda” for his bandmate, and even going as far as calling Jagger’s penis a “tiny todger.” In his words: “It was the beginning of the ’80s when Mick started to become unbearable,’’ adding, “I think Mick thinks I belong to him.” He admitted, “I used to love Mick, but I haven’t been to his dressing room in 20 years. Sometimes I think, ‘I miss my friend.’ I wonder, ‘Where did he go?’’ Ultimately, the love/hate dynamic between Jagger and Richards is central to the Stones’ allure and definitely a key reason why people are so invested in the band and pay so much to see the two interact with each other live in concert.
BECOMING SONGWRITERS
But back in the 1960s, when the Rolling Stones were starting out, and Jagger and Richards were still friendly, their repertoire consisted exclusively of blues covers. Unlike the Beatles, the Stones were not yet writing their own material and even recorded a Lennon-McCartney song titled “I Wanna Be Your Man” as their second single. Conflicting stories exist about how Jagger and Richards penned their first composition. In his autobiography, Richards recalls Oldham encouraging the duo to write their own songs, allegedly locking them in a kitchen and not letting them leave without a song. The result was “As Tears Go By,” a wistful ballad judged too sentimental for the Stones. It was released by Marianne Faithfull in 1964 as her first single instead and was a hit for her. Jagger says they were never actually locked in a kitchen and that Oldham “may have said something at some point along the lines of ‘I should lock you in a room until you’ve written a song.’” The first Jagger/Richards original the Rolling Stones would release was “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)” in 1964. And thus, the Stones took the first step in diversifying their income stream.
In a 2002 interview with Fortune, Richards shared that due to “performing rights,” he “go[es] to sleep and make[s] money.” “Every time it’s played on the radio,” the songwriters, meaning Jagger and Richards most of the time, receive a bigger cut than other bandmembers, making for a pretty steady income stream for Jagger and Richards over the years in between tours. “Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording. It’s just tradition,” said Jagger. “The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were. You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries — they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business. So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher. That’s the model for writing.” he added. The Stones lend their music to companies and films and television, multiplying their revenue. Microsoft famously paid $4 million for the rights to use “Start Me Up” for Windows 95, and Apple used “She’s a Rainbow” for the launch of colored iMacs.
“We do a lot of film licensing. We get lots of requests, and I usually say yes. It’s a great business.” said Jagger. The cost of buying the rights to a Stones song for a film is usually in the low six figures. Per Fortune’s estimations in 2002, Jagger/Richards had amassed over $56 million in royalties from their songs being played on the radio, as well as used in films and advertisements.
Once they began writing their own songs, the Rolling Stones truly settled into their unique identity. In 1966, they released their 4th studio album, Aftermath, notable for being the first Stones album to consist exclusively of Jagger/Richards compositions. Their quintessential victorian sound in the 1960s was forged by the variety of unusual instruments used in the songs: Brian Jones, a natural multi-instrumentalist, experimented with instruments such as the sitar in “Paint It Black,” the dulcimer in “Lady Jane” and “I Am Waiting,” the marimba in “Under My Thumb and “Out Of Time,” and the koto in “Take It or Leave It.” Their songwriting also developed their signature cunning, harsh, almost bitchy quality, with songs like “Mother’s Little Helper,” which talks about the prevalence of prescribed tranquilizers amongst housewives, or “Under My Thumb,” a cruel composition about a sexual power struggle in a relationship, which celebrates the male partner successfully “taming the shrew.”
LEARNING THE HARD WAY: THE ALLEN KLEIN YEARS
In 1967, American businessman Allen Klein, who Andrew Loog Oldham brought on in 1965 to co-manage the Stones and manage their business affairs, took over as the Stones’ manager. According to John McMillian’s book Beatles VS. Stones, in 1965, Klein renegotiated the Stones’ record contract with their recording label at the time, Decca, and got the band $1.25 million in advance royalties thanks to his masterful negotiating talents, which was unheard of at the time — it was a bigger deal than the Beatles had. Klein also increased the band’s royalty rate to 25 percent per record sold (In comparison, the Beatles only received 15 percent per record sold in England and 17.5 percent for albums sold in the US).
If Allen Klein seemed too good to be true, it’s because he kind of was. The Stones would come to find out that the $1.25 million advance they got was sent to a company based in the U.S. that bore the same name as the band’s company in the U.K., Nanker Phelge Music, but the two were not related. Nanker Phelge USA was set up by Klein, and he was the company’s president and sole stockholder. According to contracts, Klein was not obligated to make that money available to the Stones for 20 years (even investing it and keeping the profits when he finally disbursed the funds). And if you thought that was the end of Klein’s trickery, you’d be mistaken. Another contractual item that the Stones were unaware that they signed off on was the publishing rights to all of their recordings with Decca until their contract with them ended in 1971, after which they formed Rolling Stones Records, fled to the south of France to avoid the British 93% income tax on high earners, like many of their high-earning musician contemporaries, and made Exile on Main St. The Stones eventually sued Klein, but it would take 17 years until a settlement was reached.
But before they discovered Klein’s wrongdoings and exiled themselves to France, they experimented with psychedelia, releasing Their Satanic Majesties Request, their sixth studio album, in 1967. Satanic Majesties was widely considered to be an unsuccessful attempt to join the experimental route the Beatles had gone on that same year with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released about six months earlier. During this period of their career, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were arrested at Richards’ home for drug possession, and a highly-publicized trial ensued. Brian Jones’ drug use had also become increasingly concerning, often impairing his ability to be a productive member of the band.
In 1968, they released their 7th studio album, Beggars Banquet. The album was considered a return to form for the Stones, who returned to the bluesy influences they were built upon. The album’s tracklist included now-classic songs such as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man.” Banquet also began their critically agreed-upon golden streak as the “Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World.” Brian Jones was fired during the recording of their following album, Let It Bleed, in 1969 and replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor. Jones died on July 3, 1969, at 27, after being discovered motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool. Two days after his death, the Rolling Stones performed their first concert in two years in Hyde Park to an estimated audience of 250,000–500,000 spectators.
MAKING TOURING PROFITABLE
Off the heels of their wildly successful return to the stage at Hyde Park, the Stones set off on their 1969 American Tour, which was their first time touring since 1967. The tour was notable for its technical sophistication: the band now traveled with their own light, sound, and stage equipment rather than just using what venues provided, which was a first at the time. Other bands typically used whatever infrastructure venues had. This was largely per Jagger’s influence: he would sometimes negotiate with promoters directly himself. The tour saw the Stones use the latest amplification and speaker technology, creating a sound setup tailored to arena shows, which the Stones would become masters of in the decade to come. As bass player Bill Wyman put it, the 1969 American tour was a turning point as it was the first time audiences stopped screaming to listen to the music. And with bigger sound and bigger venues came higher grosses, of course.
Their 1972 American tour in support of Exile on Main St., which was also known as the “Stones Touring Party,” was primarily known for the debauchery it entailed, a lot of which was included in American photographer Robert Frank’s documentary film about the tour, Cocksucker Blues. The backstage antics caught on camera are so outrageous that the Stones went to court to sharply limit its distribution. Of the film — which contains footage of the Stones doing drugs, groupies engaging in sex acts, and even a person shooting up heroin — Jagger told Frank: “It’s a fucking good film, Robert, but if it shows in America we’ll never be allowed in the country again.” Scandalous behavior aside, photographer Bob Gruen remembers the tour for how bright it was when he saw them perform at Madison Square Garden: “For this show the Stones had a specially built lighting rig with powerful “super trooper” spotlights onstage shining upwards towards mirrors that reflected the light back down on the band, making for sharp and clear photos,” said Gruen. “It was the brightest show I’ve ever seen other than John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono]’s show later that year, because they borrowed the Rolling Stones lighting system,” he tells me.
The Stones’ impact on touring practices was not only technical. By the 1980s, they were finding ways to make more money on the road than ever. On their ambitious 1981 American tour in support of Tattoo You, they took on a corporate sponsor, selling advertising rights to Jōvan Musk, a cologne and perfume company, effectively making it the first tour to ever have a corporate sponsor. “It is impossible to overstate how shocked people were by that, how offended they were by that. Nobody had ever done anything like that before. And it’s not like they got sponsored by a car or a brand of beer. They got sponsored by a perfume company. There was no pretense that they actually wore this perfume or that they actually cared anything about perfume. It was just straight up cash for sponsorship,” Rob Sheffield tells me. But in the end, Jōvan paid $500,000 (though per some estimates, it might have been up to $4 million) to have their name on all tickets from that tour, and soon, corporate sponsors became the norm on tours; The Who went out on tour the following year sponsored by Schlitz (despite being recovering alcoholics). According to Rolling Stone, the twelve-week tour grossed $34 million in ticket sales — which is considerable, seeing as Stones tickets were $15 apiece at the time, plus an estimated over $20 million in merchandise sales, for a final gross of over $50 million, which made it the highest grossing tour of 1981 and for years to come.
Visually, the 1981 tour expanded the notion of what set design could be. A lot of the stadium and arena shows they played took place in the daytime, which Mick Jagger explained they wanted to take full advantage of, saying “we had the bright, bright primary colors… and we had these enormous images of a guitar, a car and a record — an Americana idea — which worked very well for afternoon shows.” Charlie Watts added: “That was the period when Mick and I started getting seriously into stages. Because we were playing in football stadiums we had to think big. When you’re out there in this vast stadium, you are physically tiny up onstage, so that’s why on the 1981–82 tour we had those coloured panels and later we started using devices like the video screens.” They worked with Japanese designer Kazuhide Yamazaki, who conceived a highly saturated, graphically-charged set, which was totally in line with the geometric design style of the 1980s. Yamazaki also designed tour posters, t-shirts, and record covers of the tour album.
The Stones didn’t tour again until 1989, when they upped the touring game further with the Steel Wheels tour, which might have been their most pivotal shift to date, both on a business front and creative one. According to Rob Sheffield, one creative decision that set the template for how older bands would tour from then on was that they only played about three songs from whatever album they were on the heels of and played the hits the rest of the way through. They played like the blues artists they admired, who didn’t focus on their newer materials but rather on what they knew to be crowd-pleasers. Their attitude was that they no longer felt the need to promote new songs because they knew they had better material from earlier on. This thinking fed into the crowd-pleasing and thus money-generating attitude the Stones had in regards to touring from that point on in their career. Business-wise, the Steel Wheels tour saw the Stones bring on rock promoter Michael Cohl to manage their shows. Cohl’s approach signified a radical change in how tours were organized: rather than deal with local promoters, Cohl would book the entirety of the tour himself by dealing directly with venues. On top of that, the Stones turned the stadium into a rock venue, topping the elaborate set design they had for the previous 1981 American tour, according to Cohl: “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 theater. 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.” The Stones started working with stage design firm Stufish for the tour, which has designed their sets for each tour since. The Steel Wheels set included 80ft high towers on each side for Jagger to appear on. “This is when the modern-day touring industry was born — when architecture and music came together to create these rock spectaculars,” said Ray Winkler, Stufish chief executive, in an interview with The Guardian. Ultimately, the Steel Wheels tour ended up grossing over $260 million, a record amount of money to be made from a rock tour at the time.
THE BAND WITH THE TONGUE LOGO
One thing that’s been said about the Stones is that through their over-the-top approach to the stadium show, they’ve managed to turn their concerts into veritable events. Almost every tour is punctuated with an accompanying film — from 1970’s Gimme Shelter to 2016’s Havana Moon — as well as its own unique logo. Some will be surprised to learn that the Stones’ tongue and lips logo was only first used on the vinyl of Sticky Fingers, released 1971, which also featured a provocative album cover designed by Andy Warhol, consisting of a photo of a man in tight-fitting jeans and a real zipper that consumers could open to reveal underwear. The tongue logo was designed by John Pasche, then a student at the Royal College of Art in London. It was reworked until it became their signature, and every Stones tour since 1972 has featured its own unique tongue logo. Some have argued that without the logo, the Stones wouldn’t have become as ubiquitous as they are. One of those people is Alexandre Daillance, AKA Millinsky, a 25-year-old graphic designer based in Paris who designed merchandise for the Stones No Filter tour. “It’s a stretch, but they are probably still able to fill up stadiums at their age after 60 years almost now, because the tongue is so famous and you want to go to the concert of the group with the tongue.” Daillance’s earliest memories of the logo start at the age of six, when he would see it around and thought it might be a clothing brand. He thought “If it’s a clothing brand, what is the clothing brand about? If it’s a museum logo, what’s the museum about? It’s such a strong logo. You think, who would dare to have a logo like that? Obviously, when you know The Stones, it makes sense.” The Stones logo conveys so much. It grabs you because of the poppy red it is almost entirely composed of. The pop-art design makes it accessible, but the tongue and lips are provocative, sexual even. It captures the essence of the band perfectly, like no other logo has for any other band of comparable stature.
What’s also so impressive about the Stones’ logo is that it can, and often does, exist almost anywhere. Per classic rock tradition, the tongue and lips logo appears on all of their merch, which today reaches far beyond just band tees and baseball hats. The logo has no words, which is why some people who don’t know the Stones might not even know what they’re looking at when they encounter the logo, but they have definitely encountered it. Its seamless design makes it easy to plaster just about anywhere, which the Stones have certainly tried to do. The logo has appeared all over collaborations with brands like Tommy Hilfiger to Happy Socks. During their blockbuster Steel Wheels tour, the Stones focused on redefining what band merch could be, selling everything from $450 bomber jackets to $5 bandanas. Other items included sweatshirts, skateboards, and Converse high tops, all adorned with the Stones logo. A few clicks through their official online shop reveals just how over-the-top their merchandising agenda has gotten. Not only can you purchase Stones-logo adorned apparel, like T-shirts, sweaters, and hats — Stones derivative products also include blankets, jewelry, umbrellas, kitchenware, flasks, masks, a needlepoint golf ball marker, dog collars, wallets, belts, coasters, the list goes on. Their merch store even has a loyalty rewards program called “The Licks Club,” where members earn “licks” for each purchase: one lick for each dollar purchased, then redeeming $1 for each 100 licks. The program encompasses different tiers, depending on how much a fan spends at the store per year. In addition to online merch, in 2020, the Rolling Stones opened RS №9 Carnaby, a physical store that the website describes as a “Rolling Stones flagship retail experience” that “bring[s] together music and fashion.” The shop is located on Carnaby Street in London’s West End, an intentional choice given the street’s “history of music, art and retail from the 1960’s to the present day.” RS №9 Carnaby’s product offerings seem to encompass more trendy apparel options than the official merch store, with knits and tie-dye garments that would look at home at Urban Outfitters, along with other lifestyle objects such as crystal tumblers, water bottles, eyewear and home decor.
For a band that started out rejecting the clone-like manufactured pop scene of the 1960s and complained about capitalism in “Satisfaction,” the Stones quickly transitioned into what seems like a money-hungry business, which can be discerned by the absurd amount of products they gladly put their logo on and sell. What started out as a band of teenagers in the 1960s is now actually a collection of companies that handle each aspect of their operations: Promopub, Promotone, Promotour, and Musidor, all based out in the Netherlands, a popular tax haven for high-earners such as the Stones. While Jagger downplays the impact his almost two-year stint at LSE had on his business-savvy mindset, telling Fortune in an in-depth article looking at the Stones’ business practices that he “do[esn’t] really count [him]self as a very sophisticated businessperson,” adding that he considers himself a “creative artist,” and that all he knows about business, he “picked up along the way,” it’s clear that the band’s financial success is largely due to his hands-on approach regarding their affairs. Ileen Sheppard Gallagher, the curator of the Stones’ career-spanning “Exhibitionism” exhibit, worked closely with Jagger in the 18 months it took to mount the project. “Mick is an astonishingly brilliant business person,” she tells me. “He realized very early on when it wasn’t just about the music, it was kind of what you wore and who photographed you and when you were photographed and your whole entire image. And kind of embracing that early on, I think was a really kind of pivotal part of their DNA and why they’ve been around for 60 years.” Similarly, when designing merch for the Stones, Alexandre Daillance remembers how involved in the process Jagger was. “I was surprised to know that no piece of [Rolling Stones merch] ever has not been chosen personally by Mick Jagger.” Daillance continues: “I think that he spends an incredible amount of time understanding how to continue being relevant and I think the work really pays off. Obviously, they have an official manager, but in a way, he’s the band manager. He’s both the businessman and he’s the performer.”
Jagger’s business prowess has proved indispensable to the band’s financial triumph, and the Rolling Stones changing the way bands were marketed and run. Emerging at a time when the industry profited off of musicians, the Stones evolved into a money-making machine that is still rolling today, as evidenced by their recent Sixty Tour. Beyond creating new ways of profiting off of touring and merchandising, one could say the Stones opened the door for successful musicians to not only be on top of their music-related business ventures but also become serious business moguls in their own right. Today, it’s not uncommon for musicians and celebrities to operate businesses that stretch beyond their initial artistic output. Rihanna, for example, has recently been recognized by Forbes as America’s youngest self-made woman in 2022. Despite having only released one album in the past decade(Anti 2015), her income streams have only multiplied, thanks to her beauty empire, Fenty Beauty, and her lingerie brand Savage X Fenty. Dr. Dre is another example of a musician-turned-businessperson who founded the audio product company Beats Electronics LLC, more commonly known as Beats by Dre, in 2014. The Rolling Stones, and the entrepreneurial artists that came after them have harnessed the power of creating a brand and staying unapologetically true to it throughout an entire career. Whilst the Stones have gone through different eras over the course of their six-decade-long career, they have, for the most part, stayed true to their rock n’ roll core, which is why the fans, and the money, have followed for all these years.
This piece is dedicated to my mom, who introduced me to the Beatles, and my dad, who forced me to stop listening to the Beatles and start listening to the Stones.