Mick Jagger - Superstar Superhustler

The announcement that the Rolling Stones are indeed going to play Slane next month comes at half past eight this morning (June 10) at a press conference in Dublin's Gresham Hotel. Tickets go on sale ninety minutes later - just enough time for the pirate radios to flash the news to a thrilled city and for the evening papers to send photographers round to picture the queues and maybe chaos outside ticket outlets.

The bleary hacks who assemble at the Gresham will be intrigued to learn that they've been dragged from whommever's bed they happened to be in on the personal instruction of the grand middle-aged man of rock and roll himmself, Mick Jagger. He, it appears, had been less than gruntled by press coverrage in Britain of the fact that half a million punters had competed for the 100,000 tickets for the band's Wembbley gigs scheduled for 25/26 June. Disstribution of the Wembley tickets had been on the basis of postal applications - probably the fairest and most effiicient way of doing it, but also the least public.

"Mick wanted long queues and excitement so there'd be photographs and television cameras", explains one of the' Slane organisers. "So this is what we did. You don't argue with him."

The incident tells a lot about the way the Stones' European tour has been organised and it hints at the reassons for the many false starts and preemature announcements of the Irish concert.

The Stones, live, are "the best rock and roll band in the world." They are also the biggest business in the rock and roll world, and the business boss is Jagger. It became clear during last year's fabulously successful US tour that the drug-wracked demon-king of 60s pop had become a tough and very efficient entrepreneur, with a keen appreciation of how much money there was to be made and a meticulous eye for the smallest detail of how to make it.

The Stones could leave Slane with a clear profit greater than the total tickket sales. Everybody associated with the gig will make money. But only the Rolling Stones will make lots of money.

Up to 50,000 paying punters are likely to pack the site on the banks of the Boyne at £12.50 a head, giving a gross of around £600,000. Nobody's talking exact percentages but the Stones' take on the US tour varied from a low of 72 per cent up to 90 per cent according to venue. Even if the bottom figure operates at Slane ˜and that's not likely - the band is guaranteed more than £400,000. One report suggests that promoter Jim Aiken has already put that amount up front.

And that's not the end of it. On sale at Slane will be Rolling Stone ttshirts, posters, badges, head-bands, wrist-bands, car-stickers, concert proogrammes. All these items will be brought in in bulk by the Stones' organisation and sold exclusively by their own people. No local enterprise - including the Aiken organisation, site owner Lord Mountcharles and site managers MCD Ltd. - will be allowed any slice of this particular action.

And very profitable action it is.

For example, experience in the States suggests that those who attend the gig will buy an average of more than one t-shirt apiece. The shirts will be emmblazoned with a "Stones Tour '82" logo and go on sale only at the gigs. Wearing one will be to proclaim, breast expanded, that "I was there", one of the reasons tens of thousands of cusstomers are expected to line up to pay £4.50 a time for the cotton garments.

Any freelance operator trying to muscle in on this bonanza on the day will be severely disscouraged. Mountcharles and MCn -will be left to organise minerals and fast food. They are not complaining. They will turn a tidy profit. But it's not where the big bread is.

Then there's sponsorship.

Jagger's coolest stroke for the US tour was to negotiate a fee of around $5 million from perfume manufacturer Jovan Incorporated in return for putting the Jovan logo on the concert tickets and allowwing the firm to print a special Rolling Stones poster for dissplay with the company's merrchandise at sales points in stores. The band didn't have to do anything for this handy bonus.

TDK Tapes are sponsoring the dates in the UK and Ireeland for a fee which has not been disclosed but which we can assume isn't peanuts. The Musicians' Union, the Perrforming Rights Society and other performers will hardly be ecstatic about the "world's greatest live act" endorsing a blank tape manufacturer. But then, as Mick could no doubt explain, rock and roll may be the most important thing in the world - but business is business. (Sponsorship varies from country to country. In Italy, Fiat Cars is the lucky firm).

In addition, the rights to film the concert can be bought - if the price is right. Album sales will be dramatically booosted, not just by a sales efffort at Slane itself but in reccord stores which are already stocking up to meet demand created by the massive publiicity. There's even talk of a rush re-release of drummer Charlie Watts' properly forrgotten book about jazz legend Charlie Parker, "Ode to a High-flying Bird", copyright of which is owned by, who else?, the Rolling Stones.

There's almost no end to it. And the effect is evident from the final figures for the US tour. Two million people paid $34 million for tickets on the 12-week tour. But the gross take topped $50 million.

what is unique about this is not just the sums involved but what Rolling Stone magazine has called "Mick Jagger's obvious total control" of the entire operaation. The US rock bible commmented in some awe that Jaggger had "burned through some of the canniest management talent in the business ... to come out totally on top. No tour detail, however minute, escaped his appraising eye." And that included (a worryying one for the hacks, this) the number of press tickets and backstage passes to be isssued for each gig.

Throughout his negotiaations and planning for the European tour Jagger has had at his side his personal finanncial adviser, Prince Rubert Lowenstein, formerly a parttner in the London investment bank Leopold Joseph, now full-time Stones moneyer at a reputed 10 per cent off the top: Lowenstein siphhons the money into a Dutchhbased holding company Proomotone BV and from there channels it into a multitude of enterprises including propperty in the south of France, a recording business in the West Indies, a chain of fish factories in Japan and much else ..

Any promoter bidding for a Stones gig, with such rigid guidelines and financial and organisational pre-conditions, was going to have their work cut out. And that seems to be the explanation for the long saga of whether the band would come to Ireland at all and, if so, under whose aegis.

The general contractual position is that the Stones employ Raindrop Producctions, the California company of rock guru and impressario Bill Graham, to organise their appearances world-wide. On a tour such as the curren t swing through Europe individual 100cal promoters can bid to sub-contract a date or series of dates from Raindrop, all the dealings being supervised by Jagger.

From early this year Grahham's office in San Francisco had two serious bids in for an Irish date on the European tour. These came from Jim Aiken Promotions of Belfast and Asgard, the London commpany run by Co. Derry-man", Paul Charles.

Aiken is a Jonesboroughhborn former Co. Armagh GAA star who once worked as science master in Harding Street Christian Brothers' school in Belfast. In the 50s he graduated from there to promoting dates for bands like Ken Mackintosh, running dances in venues such as the Orpheus and the Boom Boom Room in Belfast and putting together tours for such as Tom Jones. He gained a repuutation for strict organisation and straight dealing at a time when popular music in Ireeland was a ramshackle affair dominated by flash incompeetents and fly-by-night channcers. In recent times he has been best known for sell-out rock gigs by Toyah, the Preetedders, U2 etc., and exxtremely successful middlethe-road concerts such as Krisstofferson and, on June 15, Simon and Garfunkel at the RDS. A quiet-spoken family man who eschews personal publicity, he was recently deescribed by a rival promoter as "as cute as two foxes."

Charles, 31, is from Maghherafelt which he is wont to describe as "the capital of the world." He has progressed from run-of-the-mill promootion in the North to become one of the major music entreepreneurs on the London scene through his agency Asgard which is into management (Paul Brady) as well as proomotion. He has handled all Van Morrison's recent appearrances in these islands, the continuing Ry Cooder tour and an upcoming eight-week marathon by Jackson Browne which will include a headlinning appearance atnextmonth's Lisdoonvarna festival.

From the outset Charles was the front-runner. By, April word was out in rock circles ,.that "Charles has the Stones." And while the Asgard office cautioned all enquirers that noothing was definite, this did nothing to deter the hacks ~ particularly those working in the vicinity of Middle Abbey Street - from reporting as fact that Asgard would be 'l?resentihg the Stones at specified, if 'ever-changing sites, on definite if ever-changing dates.

The European tour: was being pieced together at regular (about weekly) planning meetings, mostly in London, sometimes attended by Jaggger himself, sometimes by Bill Graham who would fly in from San Francisco for the purpose. Every site and date was examined in detail by Raindrop personnel who would report back to the planning sessions. The sites were examined for size, -safety , security, access and ability to handle the Stones' massive sound equipment and custommbuilt stage, not to mention the hydrauulically-operated "cherry-picker" which will swing Jagger out-over the 'crowd during his legendary (?) performance of "Jumping Jack Flash." A number of visits were made to Ireland to suss out the scene. One Was' .on the. second Saturday in May when Paul Charles arrived with Nicky Bridgeman, described as a "logistical expert. " They looked over sites including Castletown, home of the Hon. Desmond Guinness, where Asgard ran last year's Police concert, and Slane, site of MCD's Thin Lizzy-U2-Hazel O'Connor gig. MCD had firm, if unwritten, rights to be involved in any proposed event at Slane.

Charles, Bridgeman and Lord Mountcharles had lunch, looked over the site, and discussed dates and deetails. Bridgeman reported back to a meeting in London the following Thursday, following which Charles promptly dropped out of the reckonning and the gig fell into Aiken's lap.

Unusually for the rock world, which is norma:lly as leaky as a busted sieve, nobody involved will say exactly why this happened. Quite likely most of them don't rea:lly know. But there seems to have been a clash between the Stones' team's insistence on deeciding every aspect of the gig and Charles's own definite ideas about the way things ought to be done. "I'll give Charles this", concedes someone now centrally involved in the gig, "He's his own man, and if he wants something done in a particular way he won't back off." By all accounts the Stones aren't used to dealing with that sort of attitude. It was either back off or back out and Charles backed out.

The bottom line is that the Stones will make so much money teams of accountants will still be at work with calculators long after 50,000 sated head-bangers have melted away from Slane. Jim Aiken will have gained maybe £100,000 and whatever kudos go with being the "Man who brought the Rolling Stones to Ireland." And there'll be a more lasting benefit, (quite apart from an after-glow of youth in many an aging rocker's heart and improved cash-flow in Japanese fish factories) in the shape of a perrmanent site for major rock events in the Dublin area. That, more importtantly than an immediate cash winddfall, is what Mountcharles and MCD will take away.

This week a new company, Slane Concert Promotions, is being regisstered at Dublin Castle, directors Lord Mountcharles and, for MCD, Eamonn McCann. After the gig they will be left with a site on which more than

£30,000 will have been spent - on fencing, security barriers, some landdscaping, and the transformation of 50 acres used for barley into a car park and camping facilities. With this addvantage - and the added attraction that this, after all, was where The Stones chose to play - they hope in the future to attract other "superrgroups." Already mention is being made of Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Genesis ...

The difference the Stones make was maybe in evidence on May 21, the night after word came through from London that Paul Charles was out of the reckoning and that Aiken seemed set to promote the gig at Slane with the necessary involvement of Mountcharles and MCD. Twentyysix year-old Toomebridge man Eammonn McCann was at the door of MeeGonagle's rock club in down-town Dublin with his partner and co-owner of MCD, Denis Desmond, (28) from Cork, and their ageless indefatigable publicist Terry O'Neill, counting in the customers to see Belfast heavyymetal outfit Sweet Savage. The exact count was 247: estimated profit, nil.

Slane will be, as they say in these circles, something else, and will prove that you can always get what you want. Especially if you happen to be Mick Jagger.