Sir Mick Jagger says a newspaper editorial saved him from prison in 1967.
The Rolling Stones frontman was arrested on minor drug charges and was facing up to three months in prison but when The Times ran an editorial insisting he should be treated the same as any other citizen, he was quickly released.
Mick told The Times: "What did it mean to me personally? That editorial got me out jail. One day it dropped, and the next thing I was out."
The drama started when police raided a party Mick’s bandmate Keith Richards threw at his West Sussex estate.
Mick, 73, explained: "It was just a rather ordinary bohemian party, you know what I mean. We had a nice day wandering across the downs. And then we just came back and were hanging out, talking and watching telly.
"It was a surreal moment. A rather ordinary nice English farmhouse and a lot of young people enjoying themselves in a sort of normal way without causing anybody any trouble, and suddenly 20 policemen barged in."
Four amphetamine tablets were discovered on Jagger, and although they had been purchased legally abroad, he did not have a prescription for them in the UK.
He was charged and said: "They had to do you for something. That was the whole point."
However, Lord Rees-Mogg of The Times believed that Jagger and his friends had been targeted because of their profile and he wrote an editorial insisting that they should be treated the same as everybody else.
In the piece, which Jagger credits for saving him from three months in jail, he wrote: "Mr Jagger’s is about as mild a drug case as can ever have been brought before the courts. It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man."
Sir Mick Jagger: ‘Newspaper editorial saved me from jail’
