February 12, 1967—When he answered the door at his Sussex, England estate that evening, Keith Richards, somewhat the worse for wear after using LSD at his party, disregarded the urging of Marianne Faithfull, girlfriend of Rolling Stones bandmate Mick Jagger, that if he ignored the visitors outside, they would just go away. What could possibly be wrong? the rock-‘n’-roll guitarist thought. There was simply a “little old lady” out there, along with more than a dozen uniformed dwarves.
Despite the highly improbable appearance of so many diminutive creatures in matching clothing together at one time, Richards greeted the unknown visitors with open arms. They promptly presented him with a warrant to “search the premises and the persons in them, under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965.” The law found what it expected to find and arrested those inside.
Well, some of those inside. While Richards, Jagger, and art dealer Robert Fraser were hauled off to the pokey, the drug dealer who had supplied most of the mind-altering substances that night, David Schneiderman—a.k.a. “The Acid King” —was not only left mysteriously untouched by the police, but was not pursued in connection with the case when he almost immediately disappeared.
It took four more decades to confirm, but the suspicions of The Rolling Stones and the rest of the counterculture—that the partiers at Richards’ Redlands home had been set up by police and press acting together—turned out to be true. The ensuing case not only proved a major legal battle of the British Establishment vs. the rising youth culture, but also an early indicator of what has been much in the news recently: that the News of the World was collaborating with police to violate the privacy of celebrities.
The Stones’ manager-producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, promoted them as the nasty, surly, evil counterpart to the Beatles’ nice boys. This was largely hype (it was Jagger who attended the London School of Economics, and Lennon who beat early bandmate and friend Stu Sutcliffe to such a pulp that he believed he had caused the latter’s early death). For all the wonders it might have created for the group’s sales, it also sparked a backlash among people who believed them tools of the devil.
One incident after a Stones gig, when the musicians, refused a much-needed bathroom break at a gas station, relieved themselves nonetheless, made some of the newly-suspicious anxious to induce some humility in them. Among this circle were the brass at The News of the World (NOTW).
Given a seeming scoop—i.e, that one of the group was using narcotics—News of the World reported that the one in question was Mick Jagger. The Stones’ lead singer sued and won because—perhaps on the theory that all druggy rock ‘n’ rollers look alike, anyway—the scandal rag guessed wrong as to the identity of the drugged-out musician: It was Brian Jones.
Now the Fleet Street rag was doubly anxious to get Jagger because he had made them all look like fools. Soon, they found themselves in cahoots with the police.
NOTW had first attempted to work through Scotland Yard, but that agency had thrown cold water on the idea, noting that any arrest would just make martyrs of Jagger and Richards. The Chichester police were more open to the publication’s advances.
The police didn’t have much time to plan this operation, but they didn’t need much. In a preview of the black ops that have gotten Rupert Murdoch’s enterprise in trouble since then, the phones at Richards’ estate were being bugged. A motley crew of law-enforcement officials were gathered together on the spur of the moment.
What happened after Richards opened the door to them has now passed into legend. Blasting from the speakers was Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”—you know, the one that goes, “Everybody must get stoned.” The 21-year-old Faithfull, grabbing a fur rug to cover herself, was so surprised at what she called “the coppers” making free with the house that she dropped her impromptu covering.
(Perhaps the police avenged themselves for their sexual frustration at this moment by spreading a cruel—and, Faithfull insists, false—rumor involving Jagger, his woman and a Mars bar.)
Jagger and Richards received the support you might expect from other members of the British Invasion--notably, The Beatles and The Who--but unanticipated aid from an influential member of the British Establishment helped to turn public opinion in favor.
William Rees-Mogg, in an editorial titled "Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?” for the paper he edited, the London Times, blasted their unduly harsh sentences after they were found guilty at the subsequent trial. (Jagger was sentenced to three months in prison for possession of four amphetamine pills, and Richards to 12 months for allowing his home to be used for smoking cannabis.)
The musicians were being made examples because of their fame, Rees-Mogg contended. (Jagger, for instance, was a first offender who was caught with a French seasickness pill in his pocket. The medication was sold over the counter in France but required a prescription in England.)
There was a real question whether the slight Jagger would have survived a lengthy prison spell. The Times editor, however, changed the climate of opinion enough that the public did not squawk when the two Stones’ sentences were drastically reduced (to less than two days) on appeal.
When I saw the NOTW connection to the case, I immediately wondered about any involvement of Rupert Murdoch. As it happens, the Australian press baron didn’t take over this paper for another year. This particular incident demonstrates that the wiretapping of celebrities had been going on even before his arrival (though, to be sure, he could have changed the environment of the newspapers he bought, if he had been so inclined).
As for The Acid King and his disappearance: According to a 2010 article in London’s Daily Mail, David Schneiderman changed his name to David Jove, then moved to Hollywood, where he became a small-time producer and filmmaker. Eighteen years after the incident, a female friend introduced him to dinner companion, Marianne Faithfull.
The bust had had a deleterious impact on the former sweet-voiced singer, who, tired of her bad-girl image, decided to embrace it. A decade of drug abuse had followed.
In this 1980s dinner, Faithfull abruptly announced to her friend that the male to which he’d been introduced was none other than the Acid King, and he should be avoided like the plague. Her friend took her advice. (Later, Schneiderman admitted to his daughter--herself a rock musician--that he had helped set everything up at the behest of federal officials in the U.S. and U.K. who wanted to discredit the band and cause them legal problems.)
Schneiderman died in 2004, shunned by Hollywood for drug use so rampant that even it couldn't abide it.
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