Rolling Stones legend Mick Jagger’s Marylebone party penthouse – where he shimmied through the swinging Sixties – has gone on sale for the first time in 30 years for £5.5m. The hot property looks a million miles away from the den of iniquity it became when the then 22-year-old Jagger took up residence.
Now a swanky central London address, it was more notorious than salubrious back when the singer made the Edwardian mansion block the new HQ for his hardcore partying lifestyle – moving from his old mews flat around the corner.
In these never-before-seen snaps taken by rock photographer Gered Mankowitz in the summer of ’66, the lensman reveals: “Mick was moving out from his Baker Street flat to Harley House, so it was a bit chaotic. He was only half moved out of one and half moved in at the other.”
Famously, the Stones rocker’s revolving door of relationships was soon in full flow. He moved in with one girlfriend – model Chrissie Shrimpton, sister of Jean – and, before long, had replaced her with his new 17-year-old live-in lover Marianne Faithful, having dumped Chrissie’s belongings in the foyer of the building for her to collect.
Mankowitz, who snapped everyone from the Stones to Jimi Hendrix and Kate Bush, was commissioned to take portraits of all the band members in their own homes that summer for the Rolling Stones‘ office.
Trusted by the bandmates, they opened their lives up to Mankowitz, who says: “Mick trusted me – he knew I would never betray that trust and take pictures that were compromising.” True to his word, the snapper even now says discreetly: “I knew Chrissie quite well and photographed her, and I spent a couple of evenings there with Mick and Marianne.”
Describing the shoot with Jagger, who is seen showing off his groovy flat like it’s a show home – peeking out of cupboards and grandly draping himself over the Chesterfield sofa – Gered, 78, recalls: “It was just a really enjoyable day and we were really good friends by that time. Mick was posing willingly and happily, but at the same time gently taking the mickey of the cheesy home photoshoot.”
Get Off My Cloud and Paint It Black were the Rolling Stones’ big hits that summer – and paid for Jagger’s upgrade from his old Baker Street mews flat, so he could rent the penthouse pad at one of London’s most exclusive addresses.
While he didn’t quite paint it black, the flat was handily near his Harley Street doctor. The paparazzi regularly staked out the reputedly outrageous and often debauched parties he threw for his bandmates. Keith Richards would crash out there for days and royalty even crossed the Marylebone threshold – with Jagger boasting Princess Margaret among his party guests.
Photographer Gered recalls the flat not being quite ready when the singer moved in but he later had it decorated in a bohemian style, with soft furnishings on the floor of the room Jagger called his “hippy lounge”.
“In those days we all had mattresses on the floor with loads of pillows. That was when we were young enough to get up off the floor!” he chuckles. “I snapped Mick in both flats – with his new dark blue Aston Martin DB5 outside the Baker Street apartment, because it wasn’t convenient at Harley House, and inside his new flat, which was being updated to his specifications. He was having work done in the kitchen and the bathrooms.
“I photographed him in his dressing room, which must have been finished because most of his clothes had already been moved in. In these photos, he was wearing an incredibly vivid shirt, which was a white, green and purple flowery pattern. Then he had a sort-of pinstripe jacket on, and then I photographed him on the roof in a big fur coat.”
Jagger wasn’t the only famous face to have lived at the address. Joan Collins also had a flat in the smart block. “Harley House was really quite posh,” says Gered. “It was a well-known address where several celebrities had lived.” Gered recalls the members of the Stones all had very different tastes in homes.
He says: “Keith Richards had moved into Redlands, his house in Sussex. Charlie Watts had a lovely, very old, period house in Lewes, East Sussex. Bill Wyman had a very nice suburban house in the south of London, and Brian Jones had his bohemian flat in South Kensington. So, you know, they were living extremely well, but in their own individual ways.”
Jagger and Faithfull moved out of Harley House in January 1968 and into the property he bought in Chester Square, Belgravia but with the dawn of a new decade, the party was finally over for the couple, who split up in 1970. Still, with moves like Jagger’s, another glamorous girlfriend was already waiting in the wings…
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