Intelligencer

Five Things We Learned About the Rolling Stones

From Bill German’s Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy From Brooklyn Got Mixed Up With the Rolling Stones (And Lived to Tell About It):

Add Comment

By Emma Pearse
Published Feb 22, 2009

(Photo: Terry O'Neil/Rex USA)

1. The group’s code name for Mick Jagger was Brenda. They’d use it when they wanted to complain about him. Keith Richards came up with it after coming across a book by an author named Brenda Jagger.

2. Chuck Berry once dropped a lit cigarette down Richards’s shirt in a car at LAX, burning him somewhat badly.

3. During the recording of Dirty Work, Richards passed out whenever Jagger was around, apparently to avoid contact with him.

4. Jagger used to answer his phone in the voice of his Spanish cleaning lady so callers wouldn’t know it was him.

5. Richards hired a Talmudic scholar and pharmacist named Svi to be his assistant. Duties included getting him out of bed, conducting late-night searches for Snickers bars, knowing the best drug hiding places on the private plane, and drug “taster.”

Have good intel? Send tips to intel@nymag.com.