The self-appointed ‘greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world’ certainly has one of the world’s greatest logos. The famous ‘tongue and lips’ device perfectly captures what the Stones are all about, says Johnny Acton

In many ways, it makes perfect sense that the iconic image of the Rolling Stones should be a wicked caricature of lead singer Mick Jagger’s mouth literally sticking its tongue out at the establishment. But it also enshrines one of the central paradoxes about the Stones. The band may have a devil-may-care, anti-authoritarian image, but it is also a moneymaking machine that makes a fortune out of merchandising and cautiously guards its intellectual property.

The story of the tongue and lips logo is a case in point. It was designed by the London-based graphic artist John Pasche (not Andy Warhol, as some have claimed) to adorn the inner sleeve and label of the Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Pasche was paid £50 for the rights to the design and given another £200 a couple of years later in acknowledgement of its success. The Rolling Stones went on to earn millions through sales of tongue and lip merchandise.

When ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ was put up for a Grammy award, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, not The Verve, were the nominees.

Ultimately, however, Pasche didn’t do too badly out of the deal. In 2006, he sold the original artwork for £400,000. The tongue and lips logo is among the 13 live trademarks owned in both the UK and the US by Musidor BV, the Stones’ Dutchbased company. In the UK, it is registered in four classes: 9 (sound and video devices), 16 (paper articles), 26 (shaped pieces and patches) and 25 (clothing) under trademark numbers 1051130-32 and 1176150.

Copyright controversy
The Stones are renowned for their aggressive marketing and incessant touring, with the latter showing no signs of abating, despite them now being of pensionable age. This constant milking of the cash cow can be, at least, partly explained by the fact that the band members got severely burned in IP terms during the first part of their career. They managed to lose control of all their 1960s recordings, and two from the early 1970s, to ABKCO, a company owned by the group’s former manager Allen Klein. When the Stones fired Klein in 1970, a bitter legal battle ensued for the rights to their back catalogue. This led the band, for example, to take out full-page ads in the music press to dissuade fans from purchasing the Stone Age compilation album, released in 1971. But Klein prevailed in court. As a result, the Stones lost both the publishing and performance rights to many of their most valuable songs, including the seminal ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.

However, it was Allen Klein, rather than the Rolling Stones themselves, who was responsible for the most controversial legal action of recent years involving the band. In 1997, the British group The Verve used an orchestral sample from the Stones’ ‘The Last Time’ as the backing track for their hit single ‘Bittersweet Symphony’. Although they had a licensing agreement with ABKCO to use the sample, Klein claimed that they had violated the terms by using too much of it. The courts eventually ordered The Verve to yield 100% of the royalties from ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ to ABKCO. To rub salt into the wounds, Klein negotiated lucrative contracts with Nike and Vauxhall for the use of the track in their advertisements. As a coup de grace, when ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ was put up for a Grammy award, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, not The Verve, were the nominees.

Despite Klein’s share of the cake, the Stones have made serious money from a combination of touring, shrewd merchandising and revenue from their later albums. In August 2006, records released in the Netherlands revealed that the band had earned $450 million since moving its commercial operations to that country in 1972.


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 18

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