ROLLING STONES PAINT IT BLACK WIKI SERIES

It would be cancel culture ,” McDonnell says.Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, the song features all five members of the band contributing to the final arrangement although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. A record company just wouldn’t allow it nowadays. “While Andrea Dworkin and Women Against Violence might have seemed like radical fringe feminism then, that reaction is mainstream now. “It certainly didn’t let the music speak for itself, and the controversy doesn’t age well.”

Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl theorises that the campaign brought some attention to the album but ultimately overshadowed it. There was a riposte a year later when the punk band X-Ray Spex released Oh Bondage Up Yours!.Įvelyn McDonnell, author of Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. WAVAW organised a boycott of Warner, Elektra and Atlantic Records lasting three years, which was only lifted after Warner Communications agreed to let the group implement a sensitivity training programme for advertising executives at the entertainment giant. Russell played along with the outrage: she posed for a National Lampoon magazine cover imagining Jagger tied up, with Russell looking on, laughing.Ĭlose to half a century on, the billboard ad stands as a turning point. “I didn’t want to get passed around from star to star, but I thought he was cuter than in his photographs.” I wasn’t a model who could only pose and look pretty, and I wasn’t insulted because I knew it was tongue-in-cheek Anita Russell, modelīut the ad came out just as French Vogue published a Helmut Newton picture of a woman wearing a bridle and saddle, amplifying the controversy. “I never thought of it in a negative way.” Jagger asked her out. “I’m an actress-model, so it seemed like fun,” she adds. Russell, who is now an equestrian and author, recalls that the musicians were charming and polite. But I wasn’t a model who could only pose and look pretty, and I wasn’t insulted because I knew it was tongue-in-cheek,” she says. “I knew about ‘I’m black and blue from the Rolling Stones’, and I knew that the bruises meant I’d been beaten and tied. “Mick told me I was too pretty, so I smeared my makeup and said, ‘See, I’m not so pretty.’ Then he told me to put my arms up and told me to make a face like I’m growling.”ĭays later, Russell, Jagger, Keith Richards and Gallant got together to make the picture. At a casting with Jagger and photographer Ara Gallant in New York, Russell passed the part-African-American model Pat Cleveland on the stairs and felt sure she’d get it. Russell recalls that she hadn’t expected to get the booking. Black and Blue is one of 10 albums being reissued and, not surprisingly, it will not be accompanied by the original ad campaign. “I didn’t mind at all, in fact I was happy for the work,” model Anita Russell told the Observer last week on the 44th anniversary of the album’s release and the impending reissue of much of the band’s later back catalogue, remastered at Abbey Road using a technique for extracting more sound from the original mastering tapes. By way of an explanation, Mick Jagger said he’d applied the simulated bruises himself. Photograph: Atlantic Recordsįive women connected with the group – “armed with buckets of fire-engine-red paint”, according to the magazine Mother Jones – defaced the hoarding, writing “This is a crime against women.” The band’s label, Atlantic Records, pulled the campaign. The controversial advert for the Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue album from 1976, featuring the model Anita Russell.

Rolling stones paint it black wiki