On February 12, 1967, a party at Keith Richard’s home in Sussex, England was interrupted by a police raid. The authorities only needed an excuse to arrest the musicians, given their unconventional attitude.
A few days after, the newspaper News of the World released alleged details on what law enforcement officers had found at the scene. One of these claims said that Mick Jagger had been found with his face between Marianne Faithfull’s legs. However rather than simple oral sex, it was inferred that the musician had been eating a Mars candy bar place inside the actress’s vagina.
Everyone wanted a piece of the Stones and this newspaper found a way to give the masses what they wanted through this seedy story. However, as crazy rock and roll as this story sounds, it was a total fabrication. Faithfull has stated that indeed when the police came into the house, she was naked and wrapped in a fur rug. Her nakedness was because she had just taken a bath, not because of any sexual behavior.
In her own words, as written in her autobiography, “The Mars Bar was a very effective piece of demonizing. Way out there. It was so overdone, with such malicious twisting of the facts. Mick retrieving a Mars Bar from my vagina, indeed! It was far too jaded for any of us even to have conceived of. It’s a dirty old man’s fantasy — some old fart who goes to a dominatrix every Thursday afternoon to get spanked. A cop’s idea of what people do on acid!”
Keith Richards has explained that the raid was not as dramatic as it was made to come off as. No doors where kicked open and definitely no orgy was occurring at that particular moment. The authorities knocked on the door and they opened. That being said everyone at the Redlands estate was coming off an acid trip at the moment. “How the Mars bar got into the story, I don’t know,” Richards recalled. “It shows you what’s in people’s minds.”
Mick and Keith ended up spending some days in prison, accused of perversion and drug trafficking. The two were unaware of what had been published in the News of the World until their trial. Fans were so angered by the demonization of their idols that they protested outside the offices of such news outlet. After paying their five-thousand-pound bail, both Richards and Jagger regained their freedom and continued to create the music that people love to this day.
Read more:
The story about the day a fan became The Who’s best drummer to date.
The incestuous tale behind The White Stripes.
Source:
Snopes
Rolling Stone Magazine
Ultimate Classic Rock
Translated by María Suárez