Assume the book mentioned here involving Jo Bergman was The Rolling Stones Blue Book?

No one worked harder for the Stones for some five years than Jo Bergman. She never cashed in on them.

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Bliss

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Title5Take1
As an American, in social situations in both America and Europe I've witnessed Europeans act appalled at how openly Americans talk about money. A Dutch woman told me that it's even considered bad form in Europe to ask, "So, what do you do?" Which is a standard American social opener. Oh, irony....

To digress, there's the notorious mid-life crisis. But I've noticed men can be very rich and accomplished, but then they hit their 80's and have a sort of old age crisis. They want to do something that will be noticed publicly and maybe endure. So you have billionaires like George Soros and Warren Buffet, who weren't terribly political earlier, suddenly in their 80's funding (hypocritically, I think) and talking things left leaning. They're gonna die soon, and so they try to up their chances of making history before it's too late. Being "just" successful isn't enough. Maybe this is the closest Rupert could get to fulfilling that want.

Good points. When you read the excerpt from PR posted earlier, there is no doubt that he had a clear grasp of his fiduciary responsibility to his employers, the RS. It seems almost preposterous that he has written an insider book after 40 years in their employ. The people you might want or expect to publish a book about their time in the inner circle - Tom Keylock, Anita, Marshall Chess, Bianca - haven't.

There are some more whose writings could be quite interesting. Some of them are dead unfortunately. Btw.Didn't M. Chess write a book as well?

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stupidguy2

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DandelionPowderman

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24FPS
What is it with people not giving Jagger his due? Who found Rupert in the first place? Who kept the band together while Keith was shooting half of Afghanistan into his arm? Just because Keith seems more approachable, and we know he can be as phony as anyone, Mick gets cut down. Mick has the right to keep employees like Lowenstein at arms length.

+ 1

However, when deciding to keep people at arms length, you goota be a certain kind of person. Maybe that is what Prince Rupert has a beef with, I dunno...

Certain people are more guarded and that is their nature. Add to that being rich, famous and a target for people who befriend you, work for you....and then write books about years later....
No wonder Mick doesn't trust people. Keith is more naive and gullible. Mick is too shrewd to be so open and trusing. It's self-preservation.
Besides, I don't think it has so much to do with 'secrets' revealed...I doubt the Prince trashed Mick - but I think it would suck if people who you may have been close to, or worked with at one point in your life ....to sell their story for money. Because the story woudn't be about them, nobody cares about them..... it would be all about you.

I understand, and persons like that do that rightfully, don't get me wrong.

However, the self-guarding will color the impression you get of that person...

Anita´s or Marlon´s, that would be THE books.....

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lem motlow
bottom line-mick fired him

like many people who work for the stones, he outlived his usefulness and was discarded.some last a short time some last a long time but eventually they all go.then they get mad at mick and write a book.

he didnt run the stones finances anyway,he was an advisor.for him to act as if he controlled the stones money for all those years is ridiculous,it would be like a financial planner acting as if he ran your household.

he made suggestions and through band meetings,consulting with attorneys and others the stones either gave his ideas a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

thats where the pathetic shot at mick comes in-"it was all me,me me " ok old fella,run along now.

It does seem he was pushed aside somehow...it certainly didn't look in that Fortune Magazine quote from 2002 that he was planning to leave 5 years later.

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'I Was the Rolling Stones' Office Manager' - Jo Bergman

'I Was the RS Fanzine Publisher' - Bill German

'I Was the RS' Flatmate' - our own James Phelge

'I Was Mick Jagger's PA' - Chris O'Dell

Didn't know the bolded had written books...ah ok "The Rolling Stones Blue Book" by Jo Bergman dates back to 1970, probably didn't say anything very juicy as I haven't seen her mentioned very often in later biographies, maybe in Norman's a bit?

Now available on iTunes for £12.99 : [itunes.apple.com]

Reviewed: A Prince Among the Stones by Prince Rupert Loewenstein
His satanic Majesty: the man who managed the Rolling Stones' money.
BY KATE MOSSMAN PUBLISHED 15 FEBRUARY 2013

One of the best things about being in the Rolling Stones was that you got to go out with posh girls. Marianne Faithfull had roots in the Habsburg dynasty. Anita Pallenberg was the daughter of an artist in Rome and spoke four languages. “The younger members of the aristocracy discovered a new career by dropping out,” writes Prince Rupert Loewenstein.

The 25-year-old Mick Jagger, concerned that the Stones still weren’t seeing a decent profit from their music in 1968, decided to get a member of the Establishment to manage his money. He chose a 35-year-old banker descended from Bavarian aristocrats, whose ancestors had been involved in repelling the Huns. Prince Rupert had never heard of the Rolling Stones: he devotes the epilogue of his book to exploring why, to this day, he doesn’t like their music. “It is comfort food . . . But it moves millions. Why?”

This is one of the funniest rock books I’ve read, fuelled, in the way only an aristocrat’s memoir could be, by a sense of cheery entitlement and the random pursuit of amusement for its own sake. “I found shopping for New York lawyers to be hilarious,” he recalls. Getting the band out of their contract with the slippery Alan Klein (whose clients included the Beatles) is likened to a game of chess.

Under Loewenstein’s care, the Stones became the most profitable rock act in the world. He was quite literally responsible for their “exile” (as in Exile on Main St): he got them out of the UK and into the Villa Nellcôte in the south of France, paying a negotiated income tax to the Alpes-Maritimes authorities. Everything you have come to associate with the “rock aristocracy” – the suits of armour, the Tatler society pages and compulsive gift-aiding – it all starts here.

The prince got into banking in the first place because his family had lost all its money. In one of the engrossing passages about his childhood, he describes his mother disposing of an emerald necklace out of the window; when he is 14, she sends him off to sell a Balthus painting for £40 and spends the money on lunch. Faced with any display of rock-star excess, he’d seen much worse at home.

Characters from the new and old worlds collide with farcical consequences. Loewenstein uses a lot of deadpan reported speech: one of the finest society ladies of New Orleans leaves a Stones concert after half an hour, saying, “They are five ugly and pointless young men and I loathe their music.”

Loewenstein may share her feelings on the band’s output but manifests a strong affection for the individuals. He is “Mick’s man” but remarks, “Keith is, in a way, the most intelligent mind . . . His aura to me was that of a generation of circus folk . . . entertainers but also with something of the pilgrim.” Of the relationship between the pair, he makes the kind of psychological observations rock journalists never quite understand: their rifts amount to “a form of divorce, enormously complicated by being between two men each fighting to prove his sexual dominance”. Relations generally worsen, he observes, when Mick and Keith are not playing enough music together. When they turn up drunk to a near-disastrous meeting with CBS, he notes that at least they’re “enjoying that old antiauthority, band of brothers spark again”.

Loewenstein’s greatest impact on the Stones can be seen in the 1970s and beyond, when he transformed their tours into highly profitable juggernauts. He cleaned up mercilessly on complimentary tickets, scalpers and corrupt promoters, audited the cost of their entourage to the last penny 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”. He copyrighted their tongue logo, licensed “Satisfaction” for a Snickers ad and “Start Me Up” to Microsoft Windows; and the Stones became the first band to have an entire tour sponsored by one company (General Electric). He claims that, if he met with resistance from them, he’d reply, “What do you care? You’re selling a business product.”

The prince parted ways with the band in 2008, when they rejected his plans for a “takeover” of the Rolling Stones by an unnamed organisation “on the fringes of the entertainment industry”. The proposed deal would have brought them a big pile of cash and allowed them, as Loewenstein puts it, “to come into harbour”: now 75, he was worried about their future – Keith had fallen off a palm tree, then a ladder, while Mick, his insurer advised him, “ought to be put on the Pavarotti pile” (ie, only covered for three performances at a time). After 40 years of saying “yes”, the Stones said “no” to Loewenstein’s proposal – perhaps simply because he was imagining the day when they’d have to stop.

[www.newstatesman.com]

>>The prince parted ways with the band in 2008, when they rejected his plans for a “takeover” of the Rolling Stones by an unnamed organisation “on the fringes of the entertainment industry”.

Well, that explains a lot, including why he felt the need to write this book, exaggerate his role in the RS org, and slag off Mick. I thought he'd had some health crisis, considering his age.

Wonder who the 'unnamed organisation' was...the Mafia maybe?

That 2008 "incident" is news to me and does indeed explain a lot...it doesn't jive with his 2006 comment that he thought they still had one or two megatours in them.

Anyway I saw the book yesterday, quite unexpectedly, in the hands of a friend/collaborator of the band and book writer himself and he was pretty excited about it. Think I'll go for the eBook. Anyone else got it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-02-25 01:27 by gotdablouse.

I have heard it all!!! This is kind of like your doctor revealing your medical history to the world. Money doesn't buy class, that's for sure.

And the world keeps turning
And life goes on
The world keeps turning
May your heart stay strong.....

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gotdablouse
a friend/collaborator of the band and book writer himself

Now that narrows it down pretty much, doesn't it

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