“A bunch of crap”: The 1970s band Mick Jagger refused to sign to Rolling Stones’ record label
There is a lot to be said for removing the middleman from the music industry, and when The Rolling Stones formed their own record label in 1970, the rock and roll revolutionaries quickly found themselves with more power than they knew what to do with, along with a roster of artists to sign up to Rolling Stones Records.
Necessity was the prevailing factor for the emergence of that record label, freeing The Stones from years of restrictions by Decca Records, who routinely knocked back the wants and artistic desires of their most successful group. Seemingly, the red tape surrounding their chosen album cover for Beggars Banquet was the breaking point, given that it delayed the album’s release for nine months, much to the chagrin of the band.
Still, forming a record label is not without its challenges, a fact that The Rolling Stones’ old manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, found out during his time at Immediate Records. Namely, it is incredibly difficult to keep a label afloat with only one band on its roster, particularly one as hedonistic and unpredictable as the Stones. At the same time, though, the group were often far too incapacitated to even think about drawing up any contracts or approaching any other bands.
Cuban-American outfit Kracker were among the only groups signed to the label during those early years, but Mick Jagger and the gang apparently came quite close to signing one of the architects of the punk revolution: the New York Dolls.
“One of the record companies checking us out was The Rolling Stones’ label,” Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain once recalled, per Classic Rock. At that time, during the early 1970s, Sylvain’s group were an all-encompassing outlier within the American rock landscape; refusing to fit into virtually any scene or genre. They were part glam, part hard rock, and part punk, albeit before ‘punk’ had even been coined as a genre.
Ultimately, though, the Dolls never ended up on Rolling Stones Records. “They sent Mick Jagger down to check us out,” the guitarist explained. “He passed on us. Probably thought we were a bunch of crap.”
“The last time we were in France, there were people following Johansen around, convinced he was Jagger and begging for an autograph. Poor guy!”
Sylvain Sylvain
Jagger wasn’t alone in that particular view, either. During those early years, the New York Dolls were rarely taken seriously by the musical mainstream. Bob Harris of The Old Grey Whistle Test, for instance, dubbed the group “mock rock” while softly chuckling at their blistering performance of ‘Jet Boy’ in 1973.
More importantly than impressing Harris, or The Rolling Stones for that matter, the New York Dolls captured the attention of rock’s next generation, spurring on the future landscape of punk and post-punk expression, beloved by everybody from the Ramones to Morrissey.
Rolling Stones Records might have been the vehicle for introducing mass audiences to that emerging proto-punk sound, had Jagger been a bit more open-minded. As it turned out, though, the Dolls signed for Mercury and The Stones openly resented the emergence of punk rock in the years that followed – perhaps the frontman saw the writing on the wall.
