Jerry Hall got Jagger off drugs by telling him they’d ruin his looks!
In a delightfully indiscreet interview, the royal socialite whose husband managed the Stones’ money reveals...
With the name her Serene highness Princess Josephine zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, Countess of Loewenstein-Scharffeneck, perhaps it’s no surprise that she has lived life to the absolute full.
Over the past 87 years she has been a ballet dancer, singer and classical pianist, partied hard on the italian Riviera with Fiat supremo Gianni Agnelli, and holidayed with the Mitford sisters and Princess Margaret.
Since her late husband Prince Rupert was for decades financial adviser to the Rolling Stones, she also toured with the band.
then there was the time when she had a very bad experience on actor Peter Sellers’s cannabis-infused honey. And she once whacked one of the Queen Mother’s snarling corgis on the nose with her handbag. ‘Accidentally, of course — though it did the trick.’
She’s also been a devoted wife and mother of three, devout Catholic, magistrate and has known everyone who was anyone. Princess Margaret once cleaned her loo, for goodness sake.
‘i was embarrassed because it was a bit of a mess, but she cleaned it well, very efficiently,’ she says. ‘i was quite touched, but she just wanted to be included — she liked seeing how ordinary people lived.’
Princess Josephine is hardly ‘ordinary’! She is stylish and soignee (despite suffering from crippling osteoporosis for half her life), looks closer to 70 than 90 and, as detailed in her memoir, Wind in My hair, A Kaleidoscope Of Memories, hails from an impossibly posh world where daily problems are somewhat grander than most people’s.
typical concerns? ‘ the lack of good domestic help clouded everything,’ she says of an uncharacteristically lean period, when funds were short.
And: ‘i worried about clothes, but i managed — Virginia, my Cypriot dressmaker, rose to the occasion.’ And
interestingly, she defines a snob as ‘someone who looks up to, and idealises, those who are in a class which he considers above him but to which he pretends to belong.’
there is no question to which class she belongs. her uncle was equerry to Queen Mary, her husband could trace his heritage back through the royal house of Wittelsbach to the 14th century.
her London home, in Richmond, a stone’s throw from her great friends Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Jerry hall and Sir Mick Jagger (for whom her husband was financial adviser for nearly 40 years), is worthy of Marie Antoinette.
it drips with chandeliers, mammoth tapestries and enormous pictures. A Steinway piano sits in the hallway — she practises three hours a day. her two dogs have luxury racing green beds in every downstairs room and a willow pattern china drinking bowl.
Fires roar throughout as she tells of dancing in the same produc- tions as Margot Fonteyn (‘She had a frighteningly controlling mother’) and Moira Shearer, turning down the accolade of debutante of the Year which included a photo session with Cecil Beaton (‘not really my thing’), and partying like mad.
naturally, our conversation turns to today’s partying princes, William and harry — and the latter’s girlfriend Meghan Markle.
‘Maybe she’s very exceptional. But on the whole i’ve always thought royalty should marry royalty. it’s far easier. they know the job. Look at the last Queen of Spain — she never made any silly comments. Put up with all his philandering. Wonderful. i think it’s easier.’
Princess Josephine has been friends for many years with the duchess of Cornwall (‘Camilla’s
great fun and very, very funny’), Princess diana (‘ rather sad and lonely’) and Sarah Ferguson, who was romantically involved with her son- in- law’s brother, italian aristocrat Count Gaddo della Gherardesca.
But most of all Princess Marga- ret, with whom the Lowensteins holidayed for years on Colin tennant’s Caribbean island of Mustique. Margaret was a particularly close friend — though even closer to Prince Rupert. ‘Well, both being Germans, you see.’
For her part, she says Princess Margaret was a ‘very sweet, very clever and very loyal friend — she would give you the coat off her back’, but ‘a difficult character’.
‘She liked lots of parties, she’d play people along and get them to do what she wanted. She was easily bored and had to be entertained. She wanted people around her all the time.’
For example, if Josephine tried to sneak off to bed, Margaret would get quite cross. ‘She’d say: “Going to bed already?!” ’
Also part of the Mustique set were david Bowie and more recently the Middletons (‘i like them very much — difficult job, done well’) and Mick Jagger and his ever-expanding family.
Rupert and the Stones were an unlikely fit. ‘Rupie the Groupie’, as he was nicknamed, was a devoutly Catholic Bavarian Prince who ran a merchant bank, barely drank, loathed drugs, made annual pilgrimages to Lourdes and hadn’t heard of the Stones.
‘he liked Bach and Mozart and Wagner and well, all the big ones,’ Josephine says proudly. His view of the Stones classic Satisfaction? ‘ heavens no! he wouldn’t class that as music!’
But that didn’t stop him being, as he put it himself — ‘a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny’ to the band, restructuring their finances and juggling the vastly inflated egos of Jagger and Keith Richards.
he extracted them from scrapes, women trouble, tax liabilities, onerous contracts, and soothed raging tempers — such as when Richards pulled out a knife after someone had eaten his favourite pre-show shepherd’s pie.
it was hard work. the Stones were nocturnal and slept all day. Many nights were spent on the phone to Los Angeles, sorting out problems.
‘But Rupert was terribly fond of them,’ says Josephine. ‘We all were. Mick was amazing with the children — he’s always been fantastic with all children.’
it was a mutually beneficial relationship: they all got very, very
‘Prince Harry marry Meghan? Royalty should wed royalty’
rich and became close friends. ( Rupert was godfather to Jagger’s son James.)
Soon, Jagger and his then lover Marianne Faithfull were hobnobbing with the landed set, joining the Loewensteins for Christmas at Warwick Castle with their friend Lord Warwick (though Faithfull spent most of the holiday in bed — ‘She was a very frail kind of person’).
Josephine and Rupert held glittering parties for up to 500 guests. Their infamous White Ball in 1969 (when guests had to wear white) went on until 7am. Neighbours’ complaints to the police met the shrugged response: ‘Princess Margaret is a guest. What can we do?’ Today,
it seems like another world. Nearly half a century on, Josephine is appalled at the decline in social standards.
‘People are much more vulgar. I don’t think manners are so good, except for very aristocratic people, perhaps,’ she says.
‘and some other people, too, of course. and all this obsession with posh — there’s so much envy. It’s not someone’s fault to be born into a grand family or sent to Eton.’
But her stories prove that good breeding does not always equal good behaviour.
The upper-crust novelist Nancy Mitford once heartlessly claimed a holiday they’d shared in Venice had been ruined by the presence of a disabled guest in a wheelchair. ‘She enjoyed saying cruel things like that for the hell of it,’ says Josephine. ‘ They [ the Mitfords] were all cynical and liked to shock.’ also, the duke and duchess of Windsor, whom she first met at a dinner party at Maxim’s in Paris, sound ghastly. ‘They were both very shrivelled,’ she says. ‘Their life was strange. It was just a social life, not very satisfying. Wallis was amusing and a wonderful mimic, like a little marmoset.’
and Peter Sellers was anything but funny in real life. Josephine and Rupert attended his wedding to 20-year-old Britt Ekland in 1964, two weeks after the comic met the famed beauty.
‘We were the only friends there and we’d only known him six months,’ she says. ‘His mother was there, but the rest were just staff — hairdressers and such.’
She recalls how, for her birthday, Sellers gave her cannabis honey. She tried a little bit, the one and only time she tried drugs. ‘It had a disastrous’ effect,’ she says. ‘I started laughing and laughing and couldn’t stop. and then I started playing the piano and couldn’t stop that either.’
Her husband had been out, playing bridge, and when he got home, she was still laughing. ‘Goodness he was angry — he chucked the whole lot down the loo. He was so anti-drugs.’
and when Jerry Hall got her hands on Mick Jagger, became anti-drugs, too. ‘apparently she told him it was bad for his looks. That was enough to make him stop,’ says Josephine.
‘She was a wonderful mother — those children have such lovely manners — and was a wonderful wife.’ She stops herself, recalling the couple never legally married. ‘I suppose she wasn’t a wife, but she cleaned him up.’
Indeed, she claims that Jagger is now such a health-nut that he can’t manage half a glass of wine. ‘He’s very susceptible to that kind of thing. Maybe it’s an allergy. He also likes things quiet. once, he said: “If people start using mobile phones on Mustique, I’m going to leave!” ’
She clearly adores Jerry Hall and is thrilled for her ‘love story’ with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, despite Hall coining the ‘Rupie the Groupie’ nickname about Josephine’s hus- band. ‘one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard,’ she says crossly. ‘He was their financial adviser! It’s like that thing with Princess Michael – Princess Pushy! Why go on and on? It’s an old joke. Boring! I know her well.’ But isn’t the Princess pushy? ‘Well . . . yes. She is quite. She knows what she wants, but she’s very clever and a wonderful friend.’ ON
aNd on the chat goes on — and up the famous names keep popping like champagne corks.
Margaret Thatcher? ‘ Such standards! Such a good listener!’ Ronald Reagan? ‘Never seemed remotely weighed down by his job.’
She tells me of a lunch with Princess diana at Lady annabel Goldsmith’s house in Ham. ‘Her marriage was over, just. She was very sweet to talk to — films, music, her boys — but she was very lonely.’ diana stayed from one o’clock till six. ‘ She just didn’t want to go home. It was very sad. I suppose she loved Charles in a romantic sort of way, which isn’t really much help in a marriage like that.
‘But you’ve got to be suited to the life. Being in love has nothing to do with it, I’m afraid.’
Her own husband, Rupert, died in 2014 after a long battle with Parkinson’s. They’d been happily married for 57 years and had three children — two boys (both now Catholic priests) and a daughter who married Conte Manfredi della Gherardesca.
a year before his death, Rupert rocked the apple cart with his own memoirs, a Prince among Stones. He revealed how the band used to receive paper bags stuffed with cash at their gigs and how they became tax exiles in France.
Jagger was furious, saying: ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think your ex-bank manager should be discussing your financial dealings and personal information in public.’
Josephine responds diplomatically: ‘Mick’s a very sensitive person, let’s put it that way.’ She then says the two men made their peace in a final goodbye on Mustique. ‘a last embrace — they were devoted to one another!’
These days, Her Serene Highness’s life is rather too full of last embraces, but it is still rich — rammed full of music societies, lunches in her sumptuous dining room and more Mustique holidays . . . with ‘sensitive Sir Mick’.
Wind in My Hair by Josephine Loewenstein is published by dovecote Press at £20. To order a copy for £18 (a 10 per cent discount), visitmailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until April 1, 2017.