A treat is in store for Rollingt Stones fans of a certain age as the rock legend Mick Taylor, former guitarist with the Stones, will join the band on stage at the Rock in Rio gig next week.
The British band is already in a studio in Oslo, Norway, rehearsing for the concert at the start of a tour that kicks off on Monday in Oslo, followed by Lisbon next Thursday, May 29th.
Taylor was the Stones guitarist between 1969 and 1974 but left the band to concentrate on taking heroin. He was recorded on Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers but did not play with the band until last year when to the delight and surprise of thousands of fans in London, Taylor appeared on stage at the Stones' 50th year celebration concert in Hyde Park.
Rolling Stones tickets are sold out for the Lisbon concert on May 29 which features Gary Clark Jr., Xutos & Pontapés, Rui Veloso with Lenine and Angélique Kidjo.
The band has reacted with sadness at the news that their former financial manager and money guru, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, has died.
Lowenstein was the titled financier who helped make the Rolling Stones rich men as the band’s business manager; he died on Tuesday aged 80 in a London hospital.
The Oxford-educated aristocrat, whose full name was Prince Rupert Ludwig Ferdinand zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, advised the Stones for almost four decades from the dope-filled haze of 1968 in to the tax-efficient 21st century.
Lowenstein managed to extract the band from its relationship with American manager Allen Klein and soon proved invaluable despite, or more likely because of, choosing not to join in the lifestyle expected of rock stars and their entourage.
Prince Rupert saw the Stones through the complex legal dispute with Klein and was behind the group’s year of tax exile, red wine and substance abuse in the south of France in the 1970s. In terms of finance Lowenstein knocked the group into shape and set the template for later money-making rock machines such as U2.
Lowenstein saw the financial advantages of megatours such as the ‘Steel Wheels’ worldwide tour in 1989 which was been resurrected every few years to replenish the already huge bank accounts of the band members.
Born in Majorca, Prince Rupert studied medieval history at Oxford University before becoming a stockbroker and banker. Despite their different backgrounds, Prince Rupert and Mick Jagger both understood the same bottom line and became friends as well as colleagues in the rock world’s biggest money printing outfit.
Despite his close relationship with the band, Lowenstein said he did not like rock and roll. This enabled him to view the band’s affairs “calmly, dispassionately, maybe even clinically, though never without affection.”
Along the way he taught the famouly parsimonious Jagger a good deal about finance so it is not expected that the band will be financially disadvantaged by Prince Rupert's passing.
