Why R. Crumb turned down The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones pride themselves on excelling in every aspect of their artistry. While the songs are the most crucial factor to the band, they care as deeply about their signature tongue logo as one of their biggest hits.
Cartoonist Robert Crumb, who uses the pen name R. Crumb, rose to fame within music circles in 1968 when he created the cover art for Big Brother and The Holding Company’s album, Cheap Thrills. Crumb was a struggling artist in San Francisco and needed the money at the time. However, if it wasn’t for his friendship with Janis Joplin, he’d likely have never accepted the project, even though he desperately needed the finances.
He recalled in 2020: “Janis liked the comics. Shortly after the comics first began coming out in ’68, she started coming around. She would hang out and smoke pot at my place. I went to her place once or twice. Her place was too crazy. There were too many crazy people hanging around… too chaotic for me.
“One day, she and the drummer David Getz came over and said, ‘We need this cover for our album right away. Columbia/CBS did this cover with a photograph of us, and we hate it. We need a new cover right away! Can you do it?’ They offered me $600. I needed the money. I pulled an all-nighter. I took some speed and stayed up all night and got it done. They came the next day, and I gave it to them.”
The Cheap Thrills cover art became one of the most iconic of its era, and as a result, many other musical groups tried to recruit Crumb to create their album artwork. The most prominent name who came forward with an offer was The Rolling Stones, who reportedly proposed to pay $10,000 to the cartoonist, but he decided to rebuff the opportunity.
In a 2006 interview, Crumb explained his decision: “I didn’t like it and didn’t want to endorse their music. I found Mick Jagger and all of those guys really irritating, actually. All this phoney posturing and strutting around is really annoying, it was ten times more annoying. All the girls liked it, girls didn’t like cartoonists, they liked Mick Jagger, so you didn’t want to support that guy”.
Outside of his career as a cartoonist, Crumb also plays big band music from the 1920s and ’30s with R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, which is from a different world musically to The Rolling Stones. Unsurprisingly, one brand of music is more attractive to the opposite sex than the other, which frustrated Crumb and prevented him from accepting the $10,000 offer.
