‘BROKE’ MICK MOANED TO HIS ACCOUNTANTS

THE Stones toured almost constantly in the Sixties and Seventies because — unlike these days — the gigs did not make their fortune and they often complained that they were all broke. Thanks to the manoeuvres of manager Allen Klein, whom they sacked in 1970, they did not even own the publishing rights to all their big hits, from Brown Sugar to Satisfaction. Jagger estimated once that they made perhaps £2,700 each from a tour, playing 10,000 seat arenas and charging £4.50 a ticket. It had to change. A journalist who joined the band on a 1975 tour of America said that Jagger — by then a tax exile — would pass the time watching the Wimbledon tennis on television and talking on the phone with his lawyers and accountants, always keeping an eye on how the pound was doing against the dollar. Mick complained: ‘They tell me I’ll make a million dollars out of this gig but you know I’ll see $10,000 by the end of it. ‘It’s always like that — you’re lucky if you walk away with a new white suit.’