Cheers, Lauren. I agree that their overarching theory is somewhat questionable, but the research in general is all solid and verifiable. I'm just surprised that there haven't been more books written about this subject. It seems like everywhere you look in the history of the 60s counterculture there are connections to sinister forces...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rol...ce-3591464
Rolling Stones financial brain Prince Rupert Loewenstein created the world's first £1billion band
May 23, 2014 06:00
By Rod McPhee
The band's money man took them from a band of skint musicians who couldn't afford furniture to a relentless global money-making machine
When Mick Jagger met Prince Rupert *Loewenstein in 1968, the rocker said he was so skint he couldn't afford furniture.
Despite becoming one of the world's biggest bands with a string of hits steered by manager Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones were losing cash rather than making it.
It did not help that Oldham's replacement Allen Klein was creaming off 50% of their royalties.
Within four years, the Prince had extricated them from their contract with Klein, got their bank balances back in the black, and laid the foundations for a billion-pound empire.
The dapper merchant banker and German aristocrat, who died this week at the age of 80, was always a rather incongruous member of the Stones' inner circle.
While Mick, Keith and the boys indulged in riotous backstage parties, with drugs, booze and groupies on tap, the devout Catholic Prince indulged in nothing stronger than a decent vintage claret.
He was introduced to Jagger by mutual friend Christopher Gibbs.
The art dealer recalled later: "I said, What you need is a sensible English merchant banker. So I found them a very amusing German prince."
Despite their obvious *differences, the Prince and the rocker clicked and Jagger hired him to handle the Stones' accounts.
But while he was known by some as "the human calculator" it was not just his financial know-how that Jagger and the band relied on.
"I once described my role with the band as a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny," Loewenstein said.
"All the time I worked with the Stones I never changed my habits, my clothes or my attitudes. I was never tempted by the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Although I enjoyed a good vintage wine."
Rupert Louis Ferdinand Frederick Constantine Lofredo Leopold Herbert Maximilian Hubert John Henry zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, to use his full name, had royal roots which could be traced back to William the Conqueror and the Rothschild European banking dynasty.
Born in Majorca in 1933, his family moved to Britain and he went on to read history at Oxford before moving into finance, eventually becoming managing director of the merchant bank Leopold Joseph.
It was while at the bank that he became friends with Jagger and was introduced to the band's lifestyle.
Jagger once organised a ball at Loewenstein's house in West London, and when the noise kept the neighbours awake until 6am they rang the police.
"We can't do anything about it," said a *frustrated officer over the phone. "Princess Margaret's there."
While he never shared the band's hedonistic ways, he gave them the means to indulge. In 1971 when he suggested they left the UK to avoid paying up to 93% tax on their profits, they decamped to Villa Nellcote in the South of France a former Nazi HQ where they blended recording with drug-taking and bedding lovers.
The band have had lucrative offshore financial arrangements ever since.
When he advised them to embark on more money-making live performances, in 1972 they completed their notorious Stones Touring Party tour across the US in which they spent a night at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion and staged a 29th birthday party for Jagger attended by showbiz royalty from Bob Dylan to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Jagger's antics sometimes proved an embarrassment for Loewenstein, but he tolerated them.
"Mick was a leopard whose spots never changed," he recalled. "During one tour, I had invited a friend, along with a group of his family and friends, to the end-of-tour party at the Hotel George V in Paris.
"I happened to notice Mick slide out of the proceedings and slip upstairs accompanied by my friend's attractive 18-year-old daughter.
"When her father approached us, we rather timorously *commiserated, but all he said was, Well done, daughter!'"
The band respected the fact that "Rupie the Groupie", as he became known, had their backs.
After a lengthy legal battle he got them out of the savage contract with Allen Klein and negotiated a new recording deal.
The dad of three, who married lawyer's daughter Josephine Lowry-Corry in 1957, encouraged the band to continue touring into middle age and beyond, with lucrative results. Their Bigger Bang tour from 2005 to 2007 raked in £350million.
Keith Richards once compared the Prince's financial acumen to his own musical talent.
He said: "He has a great financial mind for the market. He plays that like I play guitar."
This relationship continued up to 2007 when he retired from working with the band, and everything was amicable up to last year when Loewenstein released revealing *autobiography A Prince Among Stones.
Jagger, in particular, took exception, and said: "I don't think your ex-bank manager should be discussing your financial dealings and personal information in public."
But if the sadness expressed by the Stones is anything to go by, any lingering resentment over the book is far outweighed by love for their unlikely friend.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rol...z32ZYqMtBk
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