In 1966, the average price of a house in the UK was a shade over £3,500. So the image of a long-haired 22-year-old posing with his newly acquired Aston Martin DB6 – list price £4,135 – would have surely raised a few hackles in households up and down the land.
Mick Jagger knows it. And he doesn’t care. Framed by the grille of his midnight blue DB6, he engages the camera with a challenging stare. Yes, it’s my car. And…? By 1966 the Rolling Stones were one of the biggest names in rock and roll, packing theatres and stadiums on both sides of the Atlantic. The Aston Martin was one of the trappings of global success at a unique time in rock and roll history.
Mick Jagger knows it. And he doesn’t care. Framed by the grille of his midnight blue DB6, he engages the camera with a challenging stare. Yes, it’s my car. And…? By 1966 the Rolling Stones were one of the biggest names in rock and roll, packing theatres and stadiums on both sides of the Atlantic. The Aston Martin was one of the trappings of global success at a unique time in rock and roll history.
Then as now, the ‘At Home with…’ photo feature was a mainstay of celebrity magazine coverage, and both Mankowitz and the Stones felt the format was ripe for parody. Mankowitz shot Keith Richards sitting on a discarded bathroom toilet in the lawn of his Sussex mansion, Redlands. Drummer Charlie Watts grins next to a wooden clothes airer adorned with his wife’s underwear. And Jagger, wearing a pinstriped doublebreasted jacket, grey flannel trousers, floppy collar shirt, silk tie and expression of cool insolence, poses cross-legged on the cobblestones outside his London flat with his brand new DB6 filling the frame.
The Stones were the epitome of rebellious, hedonistic youth and the establishment didn’t like it. Within a year both Jagger and Richards were in court at the Old Bailey charged with drug use following a News of the World sting. Their prison sentences – three months for Jagger, a year for Richards – were so draconian that The Times ran a leader entitled ‘Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?’ They were later freed on appeal.
That wasn’t Jagger’s only collision with the establishment. Later in 1966 he had an accident in his DB6 that left the passenger door and rear fender badly dented. The other driver was the Countess of Carlisle, driving a humble Ford Anglia. A metaphor for the times?