A Prince Among Stones re
view – interesting footnote rather than essential reading
The Rolling Stones' former finanical manager Prince Rupert Loewenstein mixes high society, hard commerce and rock'n'roll
Most accounts of the
Rolling Stones focus on the
music, the drugs or the women.
Loewenstein,
the Anglo-Bavarian prince who ushered the band out of Britain in 1970
to avoid taxes, and was their financial manager for four decades, begins
with himself. His account mixes tiresome namedropping (
Princess Margaret
tells a dreadful joke, which he repeats with awe) with fascinating
anecdotes (as a seven-year-old boy he took one of the last flights out
of wartime Paris; he discovered his parents' divorce through a
classmate's Daily Express). Looking for a new project, Loewenstein sees
the band in 1969 playing "rhythmic music with lyrics describing trite
emotions". Deaf to their appeal, he is far better when he gets on to the
rise of the meticulously planned, corporate-sponsored mega-tour, and
the often fractious relationships within the group. His intriguing mix
of high society, hard commerce and decadent rock'n'roll has a hint of
the picaresque, and a more curious narrator than Loewenstein might have
made this an essential tale of the 20th century's shifting sands, rather
than an interesting footnote.
