In the spring of 1970, The Rolling Stones were ready for a fresh start as the new decade dawned. They were preparing for a 23-date European tour that summer, and with improvements across the board – better logistics, better sound, better venues, and a better musicality within the group – the tour was instilled with newfound confidence, setting a template for the Stones’ juggernaut journeys for years to come. The only thing that was missing was a brand identity, a logo that could serve to represent the group.
The logo came out of discussions around a tour poster for the aforementioned European jaunt. Decca Records, the Stones’ label, had proposed some designs for the tour’s posters, but they were turned down. Mick Jagger suggested looking elsewhere for options, and so it was that their management contacted the Royal College of Art in London looking for recommendations of someone suitable. The name put forward was that of a 25-year-old student, John Pasche.
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Pasche, who had previously achieved his BA degree in Brighton, was in his third and final year of a Master of Arts degree at the prestigious institution when he met with Jagger at the Rolling Stones’ head office, to discuss ideas for the poster. Taking inspiration from classic travel posters of the 1930s and ’40s, Pasche’s initial design for the poster was rejected by Jagger (“I think it was possibly to do with the color and composition,” Pasche said), but a second design concept, whose addition of a Concorde turbojet within a vintage motif echoed Jagger’s modernistic outlook, was approved – its stylized, graphic rendering being considered as “getting away from what had been done before” by the group.
During the process, however, Pasche had received a letter from Jo Bergman, Jagger’s personal assistant, that not only confirmed the poster commission but also asked for him to “create a logo or symbol which may be used on note paper, as a programme cover and as a cover for the press book.”
Another meeting was later arranged between Pasche and Jagger, this time at the latter’s house on Cheyne Walk, in which they’d discuss the proposed logo. According to Pasche, Jagger was looking for “an image that could work on its own… like the Shell Petroleum logo. He wanted that kind of simplicity.” Mick had collected some visual references, including a newspaper cutting he’d found in a local corner shop of a picture of the Hindu goddess Kali – the divine protector and liberator – with her tongue sticking out.
“During that meeting, I suddenly thought [about] the use of a mouth,” Pasche said. “I had an idea that would [be] something to base some ideas from.” Over the next two weeks, John worked tirelessly on his concepts, working every night on variations of angles and tones, before finally presenting a finished piece to Mick.
Pasche’s logo was of a rounded pair of glossy, brilliant red lips parting for a protruding tongue, and was rightly sanctioned by Mick and the Stones. As a logo, it is successful because it embodies so many facets of the group it represents. It is anti-authoritarian – the Stones’ rebellious behavior was tantamount to sticking their tongues out at the older generation – while in its boldness it promises excitement and the hint of danger. “At the time, they were the bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll,” Pasche said, “so I thought it was a great idea.” Plus, of course, there are sexual connotations in its blatant lustfulness. But the big question is: was it based on Jagger’s own billowing kisser?
“A lot of people ask me if it was based on Mick Jagger’s lips – and I have to say it wasn’t, initially,” Pasche revealed. “But it might have been something that was unconscious and also really dovetailed into the basic idea of the design.”
Throughout this time, the Stones had been continuing sessions for their ninth album, and by the end of the year, it had been completed and required an album cover. Andy Warhol had conceived the infamous crotch image and working zipper that would ultimately become the front cover of Sticky Fingers, but as production neared a close, the newly designed logo – which was chosen as the figurehead for the newly-launched record label Rolling Stones Records, on which this album was to be released – had to be supplied to the U.S.
According to Pete Fornatale’s book 50 Licks: Myths and Stories from Half a Century of the Rolling Stones, creative director and designer Craig Braun, who’d produced the Sticky Fingers cover package, was on deadline in New York when he received a small, low-quality monotone fax of Pasche’s work from Marshall Chess, the president of Rolling Stones Records. “I can see this bulbous tongue, but it’s like a squashed-out image,” Bruan said of the logo. “So when I saw it, I said, “[This] is not helping me at all.” Braun didn’t have time to wait for further clarity, so he blew up the logo and had it redrawn by an illustrator, Walter Velez, before making further adaptions.
“I remembered getting a book in London from a guy named Alan Aldridge,” Braun recalled. “He was an illustrator and he did a book called The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. And I remember this one illustration for ‘Day Tripper.’ and it was a girl, this cute little blond girl, and she was eating a lollipop or a popsicle. And she had her huge tongue out and the lip outline. That was like magic for me. I said, ‘We can do it now.’”
Another artist, Ernie Cefalu, while working under Braun, also developed a logo variation on the lips (and claims that his actually came first – before Pasche’s – suggesting Jagger perhaps hawked the mouth idea around intending to choose the best), but it was Braun’s own version that would make the cut. It differed from Pasche’s original in the black outline that added depth to the design and pronounced the teeth more, as well as another white highlight on the tongue.
Due to the difference in deadlines between the two regions, when the Sticky Fingers album was released in April 1971, Braun’s logo featured only on the American version (as well as the single release of “Brown Sugar,” which predated the album by a week), while Pasche’s was used in the UK and the rest of the world. However, it is Braun’s enhanced logo that has henceforth become the definitive device that the Stones have continued to roll out.
In return for his commissions, John Pasche was paid £50 by The Rolling Stones in 1970, then a further £200 in 1972. Subsequent to 1976, when a royalties arrangement was made between him and the group, Pasche received a 10% cut from the sale of merchandise that included the logo. Six years and “a few thousand pounds” later, Pasche sold his copyright to the band in 1982 for £26,000 as he feared the logo had become so synonymous with The Rolling Stones that they may have been able, due to usage laws at the time, to assume copyright of the globally recognized emblem of their organization.
In 2008, Pasche’s original drawings were bought via auction house by the Victoria and Albert Museum – which has a long-standing association with the Royal College of Art – for over £50,000. “I have an 11-year-old son and this money is going to go towards his education,” John said at the time.
Created with modest expectations, The Rolling Stones’ tongue logo has outgrown its initial purpose to evolve into something bigger and more pervasive than the group could ever be, and will no doubt outlive them all, too. It has appeared on everything from underpants to airplanes, has consistently been reproduced on all their albums since 1971, and has even served as the centerpiece to their stadium shows’ elaborate stage sets.
Through the years, the lips logo has been emblazoned by zig-zags, spikes, and the flags of countries visited. It has also been pierced, shattered, set on fire, and hand-drawn. When graphic artist Shepard Fairey was asked to update the logo for the Stones’ 50th anniversary in 2012, the tongue and lips remained untouched. “Nothing can top their tongue logo,” Fairey reasoned. “In my opinion, the Stones’ tongue logo is the most iconic, potent, and enduring logo in rock ‘n’ roll history.”
Despite all its modifications, the Rolling Stones logo’s fundamental ethos has remained throughout. It symbolizes the freedom that The Rolling Stones offered as countercultural rebels, uniting all those who sport it as disciples of defiance, while its ubiquitousness transcends the fads of fashion to shamelessly retain its sense of insolence, immortalizing forevermore the provocative genius of the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.
The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers can be bought here.
source https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/five-decades-of-the-tongue-and-lips/
