As Mick Jagger and Keith Richards vied to be top dog in the Rolling Stones, PR guru Alan Edwards, founder of agency Outside Organisation, took on the task of working for the band – as he recounts in his new memoir…
Towards the end of 1981 I received a phone call. ‘’Allo, this is ’Arvey,’ growled the voice at the other end. ‘Would you be interested in taking on the PR for the Stones?’ There was only one ’Arvey: Harvey Goldsmith, the legendary promoter who practically invented stadium rock in the UK. And, of course, there was only one Stones. My answer, obviously, was yes.
About a week later, I was summoned to a meeting with Mick Jagger in New York. Mick fired off a volley of questions about the UK music press and nationals, what their circulations were and who owned them. Next, he started quizzing me on the European media. Fortunately, I had a decent sense of the wider continental press from looking after punk acts.
I swiftly realised that Mick wasn’t so much interested in the actual figures; he just wanted to test my knowledge and see how well I performed under pressure. At the end of the meeting, he gave me no indication of how I had done, but it turned out I must have passed the test – I was hired soon after to manage the media operation for the Stones’ 32-date European tour in June and July of 1982. Or, at least, I thought I had been hired.
It fast became apparent that Keith Richards had other ideas. I heard from him a few weeks later, when I was sitting in my office at 9pm. The phone rang and an unmistakable, gruff voice said, ‘Listen ’ere, Sonny Boy Jim. If you want to work with the Rolling Stones, you’ll come and meet me now. I run the Stones, not that f****** poof Mick Jagger.’
He told me that if I wanted the job, I had to meet him at a rehearsal studio in Shepperton, a village outside London, at midnight. I was confused, as I thought I already had the job.
I knew where Mick was having dinner – at a swish Italian in Chelsea – so I thought I’d get clarification. I slipped in quietly and told him what had happened. He looked at me imperiously, said, ‘Well you’d
better go then, hadn’t you?’ and kept on eating. On arrival in Shepperton, I was shown into a tiny room with a broken window, a rusty sink and no chairs. I stood there for hours – the sound of music playing in the distance – until chinks of light appeared under the door and dawn broke.
At about 7.30am, Keith burst into the room, firing a suc
