Costume Trois pieces

Cammell completed just three films in the next 25 years, Demon Seed with Julie Christie in 1975, White of the Eye in 1987 and Wild Side in 1995. The studio behind his last film refused to release Cammell’s version and released an exploitative cut to Cable TV.

A year later Cammell, after a life time suffering from bouts of depression, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The myth is that Cammell aimed his bullet in such a way that he would be able to experience for several minutes what it was like to die. However according to the coroner he died pretty well instantly.

Keith Richards, who never forgave Cammell for letting Pallenberg and Jagger fuck on camera, once said of Performance ‘The best work Cammell ever did, except for shooting himself’.

Jagger, Breton and Pallenberg

Anita and Mick on set

It was in New York where Cammell met and lived with the model Deborah Dixon - he was to be with her for ten years and their relationship finished just before the filming of Performance, although she was a costume designer on the film. He had by now rejected painting society portraits and was now concentrating on work that had a Balthusian lolita-inspired influence (ie lots of young naked girls). While this helped him sate his notable sexual appetite (for much of his life he was irresistible to a good deal of the female sex and Dixon was seemingly happy with this and often shared his conquests) his artistic desires, at least in the form of painting, were waning.

Deborah Dixon 1964

Frames from footage shot by Anita and which appeared in the magazine OZ

Mick x acid

Jagger and Richards at Redlands in 1967

Outside the courthouse at Chichester

Mick jagger, along with Keith Richards (who was sentenced at the same trial for 12 months) had ended up in court when, after a tip-off by the News Of The World, the police had infamously raided Richards’ house in Redlands in West Sussex. During the search they had found a small amount of drugs - but enough to arrest the relevant parties. However, a rumour quickly spread (one that is still heard today) that the police who raided the property found a naked Marianne Faithfull loosely wrapped in a large fur rug using a Mars Bar in a way that wouldn’t have placated her hunger. Marianne wrote about the incident in her autobiography:

More weary teenagers waiting outside court.

Mick Jagger at he Appeals Court 31st July 1967

Mick Jagger, in the end, spent only one night at Brixton Prison although he purportedly wrote lyrics to the songs We Love You and 2000 Light Years From Home whilst there. It was apparently at Brixton when he heard from another inmate about the rumour about Marianne and the Mars Bar for the first time. On the morning of the 30th June 1967 he was released on £7000 bail, pending an appeal, and was picked up by a green Bentley which drove to Wormwood Scrubs where he picked up Keith Richards. They both subsequently had a celebratory pint in a pub off Fleet Street.

Brixton Prison today

On the evening of 29th June 1967 a relatively sober-suited Mick Jagger was taken handcuffed in a white police van to Brixton Gaol. Earlier that day in Chichester Judge Leslie Block had said to him “Michael Philip Jagger, you have pleaded guilty to possessing a highly dangerous and harmful drug (actually just four amphetamine tablets)…You will go to prison for three months”. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Jagger almost broke down and put his head in his hands as he was sentenced. He stumbled out of the dock almost in tears.”

Il a déclaré notamment qu'il était sous l'effet d'acide lors de la séance photo pour la pochette de l'album Their Satanic Majesties Request en 1967

A couple of months earlier, Mick Jagger, rather pretentiously it has to be said, told the Daily Mirror:

Teenagers are not screaming over pop music any more, they’re screaming for much deeper reasons. We are only serving as a means of giving them an outlet. Teenagers the world over are weary of being pushed around by half-witted politicians . . . they want to be free and have the right of expression, of thinking and living without any petty restrictions.