WIND
IN MY HAIR
A
Kaleidoscope of Memories
Josephine
Loewenstein
‘Josephine
Loewenstein has lived most of her life in the whirlwind wake of
husband Rupert, amidst high society, the Rolling Stones, royalty and
the fast lane of the 20th century. But here is a surprisingly
dispassionate and acute observer of this passing show, by no means
mesmerised or dazzled by it. There is a lot to read between the
lines.’
HUGO VICKERS
In Wind In My Hair,
Josephine Loewenstein captures the rich kaleidoscope of a life lived
to the full. Many of the worlds she has been part of have vanished,
or are fast disappearing. By breathing new life into them, she has
created a collage of memories in which autobiography and a sharp ear
share the page with cameos of the larger-than-life characters whose
paths have crossed hers – many of them famous, others who cast a
brief, but occasionally notorious, glow on their age, and are now
shadowy footnotes.
Happily she
maintains a sense of distance, even when she is at the heart of the
story. Privilege and austerity punctuated her childhood. She spent
much of the Second World War at Ledbury Park, her grandparents’
ancient half-timbered house in Herefordshire. Later she trained at
the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School under the formidable Ninette de
Valois, appearing in the opening performance at Covent Garden in
1946.
Forced to give up
her career because of her height, Josephine escaped to Rome, a city
bursting with colour and vitality in contrast to the shortages and
gloom of post-war London. Marriage to Prince Rupert Loewenstein
introduced her to a dolce vita lifestyle, in which she somehow
successfully contrived to be both participant and observer.
Throughout, Princess
Josephine casts an often funny, occasionally moving sideways look at
this patchwork of parties, people and places. Yet for all the wealth
and glamour, there is a poignancy about her observations, a sense of
the transience behind the glitter and bravura, that makes Wind in My
Hair refreshingly different to many other memoirs.
Sewn hardback with
jacket, 185 x 244 mms
196 pages,
illustrated throughout in colour and black and white
ISBN
978-0-9929151-7-9
Josephine
Loewenstein Remembers the Heyday of High Society
Ahead
of her memoir, socialite Josephine Loewenstein reminisces with old
friend (and V.F. contributing editor) Reinaldo Herrera about their
joyful antics in Rome and St. Moritz—before paparazzi and the Daily
Mail were even a concern.
BY
REINALDO HERRERA
NOVEMBER
18, 2016 5:03 PM
Josephine
Loewenstein— jet-setter, high-society fixture, and former wife of
Rolling Stones manager Prince Rupert Loewenstein—has never been
short of good personal anecdotes to tell at a party. So, one day, she
decided to write them all down.
The result is Wind
in My Hair: A Kaleidoscope of Memories, an autobiography that
chronicles everything from her childhood in W.W. II era London, to
her café society days in Rome, to her rock ’n’ roll life with
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Ahead of the book’s
publication by Dovecote Press this week, the author reminisces with
old friend and V.F. contributing editor Reinaldo Herrera about time
gone by.
Vanity Fair:
Josephine, it’s wonderful to be together. What gave you the idea
for your book?
Josephine
Loewenstein: Well, I started by writing short stories. Just jotting
down interesting things, anecdotes, funny things the children said,
and trips abroad.
Did you always have
this interest in art?
Well, before the
war, I went to the De Basil ballet school in Covent Garden.
That was the Ballets
Russes de Monte Carlo?
That’s right. I
always thought, “I have got to be a ballet dancer.” I had the
audition with Ninette de Valois [at Sadler’s Wells ballet school]
when I was 12 or 13. This was when the Opera House reopened in 1946.
It had been a dance hall in the war.
When did your ballet
career last until?
Til about ’49,
’50. I was very unhappy with my mother and my health went right
down, so my father said he would buy a house in London in Montpelier
Square and I could live with him. But one of my friends said, “I’m
going to Rome, why don’t you travel with me?” Nine pounds for a
one-way ticket on the train. Can you imagine?
That was the
beginning of the Rome years. The dolce vita!
The dolce vita! What
a wonderful mixture of vita and “grand” life! People who don’t
know that generation cannot imagine Roman palaces, filled with
footmen in full livery and white wigs and silk socks.
It was a very
interesting mixture of times, because you had Americans who had come
to Europe, and then you had Europeans that were living in America.
You had film stars, and duchesses who didn’t know what a film star
was.
And who would never
consort with them in a social way, at all.
I think café
society was brilliant and democratizing because it was the first time
that everybody, from all strata of society, went out together. In
1958 or 1959 Mr. Badrutt [who was one of the owners of the Palace
Hotel] told me, “This is the greatest year St. Moritz has had since
before the Second World War.” It was an incredible mixture of the
Agnellis, who were the kings of everything, and Princess Pallavicini,
and Mr. Niarchos and that entire group . . .
And Sunny Auersperg
. . .
Life in St. Moritz
was special. There was no paparazzi; no press. You could do anything.
I remember playing sardines in the dining room of the Palace Hotel.
You’d get underneath tables of people you’d never met, and hide,
and they were delighted! It was a very simple and free life because
of the lack of newspapers.
Nobody bothered you,
nor did you bother them. How it has changed.
And you didn’t
know if so-and-so was rich or poor. Nowadays, they immediately
introduce someone to you and they say, “He’s a billionaire” or
“He’s a millionaire.”
That would have been
thought very vulgar.
And in this
fascinating time in your life, when did you meet Rupert, your
husband?
Oh, much later on:
’55-ish. I think I met him at Oxford. We married in ’57. He met
the Rolling Stones through Christopher Gibbs, who was friends with
Mick Jagger
Mick had asked
Christopher “Who can help us run the business, because we’re
making a lot of money but we’re not seeing anything.” And
Christopher said, “This is just the man you want: Rupert
Loewenstein.” From then on, he ran the Stones for about 34 years.
They loved him and
he loved them. To see Rupert Loewenstein and the Stones together is
like seeing oil on one side and vinegar on the other. And yet they
melded, and made the best salad dressing in the world.
Mind you, it was a
very hard life for him, because the Stones lived only at night. He
was up all night telephoning Los Angeles and the lawyers. Rupert was
unbelievably patient. He had to be. Those were difficult times, when
everyone did what they fancied, really. I won’t say more than that!
There are some
interesting anecdotes about Keith Richards in the book.
He’s a very
amusing person. Very kind, very charming, and brilliant. Mick and
Keith are both good company. They’re interested in everything,
whatever the subject!
Quite wild lives?
It was very wild.
Less so now!
How
late pop-hating Bavarian prince became 'Rupie the Groupie' and made
penniless Rolling Stones billions in tax exile (while also keeping
them out of jail for drugs)
Prince Rupert
Loewenstein has just died aged 80
He was the man who
kept the world’s most famous rock band from jail
The merchant banker
could trace his family back to the 10th century
He turned the
near-bankrupt British group into one of the most efficient
money-making machines in the business
By CHRISTOPHER
WILSON
PUBLISHED: 00:34
GMT, 23 May 2014
His epitaph should
read ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll . . . but I loathe it’.
Yet it was this
unlikely figure — a portly, pop-hating Bavarian nobleman — who
saved the Rolling Stones from extinction.
Prince Rupert
Loewenstein, who has just died aged 80, was the man who kept the
world’s most famous rock band from jail and bankruptcy, using his
expertise in tax-avoidance.
In full, it was His
Serene Highness Prince Rupert zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg,
Count of Loewenstein-Scharffeneck.
Keith Richards was
more cautious.
‘He didn’t like
rock and roll. He thought "composing" was something done
with a pen and paper, like Mozart,’ said the Stones’ guitarist.
‘He’d never even
heard of Mick Jagger when he met him.’
Yet the merchant
banker, who could trace his family back to the 10th century, turned a
near-bankrupt British group into one of the most efficient
money-making machines the music industry has ever known.
The Rolling Stones
are often labelled the ‘Billion Pound Band’, but that’s a
massive understatement — since 1989 they’ve grossed twice that.
Their last tour
pulled in £341 million. Mick Jagger is worth £200 million,
Keith Richards almost as much.
No surprise, then,
that their aristocratic eminence grise was once dubbed ‘the human
calculator’.
But what drew an
Oxford-educated, Savile Row-suited princeling into the orbit of the
Rolling Stones?
The catalyst was Old
Etonian Christopher Gibbs, a wayward art dealer ‘usually three feet
off the ground on acid’, according to Richards, who’d adopted him
as a mentor as they navigated their way through the drug-crazed
Sixties.
Gibbs’s
bohemian-toff credentials gave him access not only to the princes in
town — including Rupert — but also to the paupers, as the Stones
then were.
The band had parted
company with their first manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, and fallen into
the rapacious grip of the man who split the Beatles, Allen Klein.
Klein had leeched
the Stones’ already depleted finances, and the relationship ended
in tears and a set of lawsuits that were to last the next 18 years.
‘Chrissie’ Gibbs
cornered Loewenstein, who part-owned a merchant bank, and told him
his friends needed help.
It was in 1968 that
Loewenstein first walked into Jagger’s house in Chelsea.
The Stones were
already a global phenomenon but, Loewenstein recalled: ‘There was
no furniture in the house.’
Jagger admitted that
the band, though working its socks off, had no money.
Initially,
Loewenstein had grave doubts. He wondered whether he wanted to deal
with a group of people he considered ‘degenerate, long-haired and,
worst of all, unprofitable layabouts’.
Loewenstein, a
devout Catholic, had developed a very different set of life-values
from the Stones in his 35 years. Sex? Not for Rupert. Drugs? No way.
Rock ’n’ roll? He abhorred it.
He attended the
Stones’ legendary Hyde Park concert in 1969 — no doubt pinching
his princely nose at all those idlers and wastrels lounging about on
the grass — later describing it as being ‘like a Nuremberg
Rally’.
It took some time
for him to come down from his moral high horse, but his banker’s
instincts told him the Stones could, one day, earn billions.
What’s more, he
came to find the band, particularly Jagger who also had a sharp
business brain, intriguing.
Loewenstein realised
that with a top UK tax rate of 98 per cent at the time, a mountain of
debt and years of litigation ahead, he simply had to get the Stones
out of the country.
‘I selected the
South of France as a suitable location,’ he said.
The group duly
relocated, though Keith Richards admits they feared the move would
kill the band’s popularity.
But it was in
France, while recording Exile On Main Street (Loewenstein claimed the
title was a reference to the group’s tax-exile status), that the
band really got its commercial act together.
It was the beginning
of the huge tours which were to give the Stones their special place
in rock history. Loewenstein sanctioned the expenditure of vast sums
on sets, trucks, lawyers, backstage personnel, dancers and singers.
In return, he sought
commercial sponsorship and the Stones became the first band to do
product-endorsement — making multi-million-dollar deals with Jovan
perfume, Budweiser beer, Volkswagen and the Chase Manhattan Bank.
In years to come,
they would get £6million for allowing Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates to
use a snatch of their song Start Me Up to promote his Windows
software.
All thanks to
Rupert.
He was scrupulously
honest and insisted on doing things by the book, less because of the
inherent moral virtue in playing by the rules than because he saw it
as a way of ensuring that the business would still be running next
year and the year after that.
He rejected the
time-honoured rock ’n’ roll custom of accepting cash in brown
paper bags when the band were on the road, pointing out that one
accusation of tax fraud could keep the Stones out of America, their
most lucrative market, for a very long time.
In 1978, when an
accountant turned up with $50,000 (£30,000) in a paper bag during a
tour, he was railing at the band for continuing to jeopardise their
future by encouraging unorthodox practices.
‘He taught the
Stones that there is no such thing as free money,’ I was told by
one former band associate. ‘But it took a lot of teaching.’
Although the rather
stuffy banker gradually grew more accustomed to the weird and
wonderful world of the Stones, earning himself the nickname ‘Rupie
the Groupie’ from Jerry Hall, he maintained a certain distance,
viewing himself as, in his words, ‘a combination of bank manager,
psychiatrist, and nanny’.
His Mr Fix It skills
were often tested. For example, when recording Exile On Main Street
at Richards’ French house Nellcôte, the band had consumed an
abundance of drugs.
Soon, Richards and
his partners in crime were in deep trouble with the French drugs
squad.
Jail beckoned. ‘We
could be locked up for months while investigations took place.
There was no habeas
corpus [a writ requiring a person to be brought before a judge or
court],’ recalled the guitarist grimly.
The persuasive
Loewenstein was able to get Richards off the hook in return for the
band temporarily leaving the country.
In 1977, when
Richards was arrested for heroin possession in Toronto, it was
Loewenstein who suggested to the court that he pay his debt to
society by playing a number of charity gigs to raise awareness of the
dangers of drug abuse, saving his client a jail term — again.
In his
autobiography, Richards describes how, when it was discovered that a
soon-to-be-released Stones song called Anybody Seen My Baby? bore
more than a passing resemblance to the Canadian country artist k.d.
lang’s huge hit Constant Craving, Loewenstein was hauled in to
troubleshoot the problem.
‘The record was
about to come out . . . I had to call up Rupert . . . we
had to include k.d. lang in the writing credits,’ recalled
Richards.
With one call,
Loewenstein had saved the reputation of the Jagger-Richards writing
brand, plus perhaps several million dollars in legal fees.
Of the prince’s
contribution to the band’s bank balance, Richards has said: ‘He
re-ordered the finances so we didn’t get cheated out of 80 per cent
of the takings.
On a $50 ticket, up
till then, we’d get $3. He set up sponsorship and clawed back
merchandising deals. He cleaned out the scams and the fiddles. He
made us viable.’
The secret of the
prince’s success was that he treated the Stones as a multi-national
firm, restructuring their management company into a pyramid based on
four firms headquartered in the Netherlands.
Decisions on where
to record, and where to tour, were made on the basis of tax benefits.
At one point,
Loewenstein became caught between Jagger and Richards in a power
struggle over the direction the Stones should take — Jagger
assuming complete control over tours and marketing, Richards claiming
that everyone else in the band should have a say.
For a very long
time, the two old friends refused to speak. It took all of
Loewenstein’s diplomatic skills to stop the band breaking up
altogether.
All its surviving
members agree that it was Loewenstein’s enduring legacy which put
the Stones back together and on the road for the money-spinning 50th
anniversary concert at the 02 arena in 2012, and at Glastonbury.
But by then, after
39 years with the Stones, he’d had enough. In 2007, he parted with
the band — amicably, although Jagger was angered by the publication
last year of his memoir A Prince Among Stones.
‘Call me
old-fashioned,’ the singer was quoted as saying, ‘but I don’t
think your ex-bank manager should be discussing your financial
dealings and personal information in public.’
Just how
‘old-fashioned’ it is to have one’s tax affairs cunningly
arranged by a financial wizard is another matter.
In fact, despite the
apparent gulf in lifestyle, language and clothing, Loewenstein and
the Stones had much in common. Back in the Sixties the Stones thought
of themselves as outsiders and risk-takers — and so, in his own
way, did Loewenstein.
Born in Majorca, he
may have come from an ancient Bavarian family, but his branch of it
had lost its influence.
There are many
princes in Germany, and it’s just as easy to feel you are bottom of
the pile when you have a title as when you’re a penniless schoolboy
from run-down Dartford like young Michael Jagger.
In 1962, when the
Stones were still dreaming of storming the pop charts, Loewenstein
had his own dream — of storming the City.
He’d read
mediaeval history at Oxford and, with two fellow former students,
went out to find the cheapest merchant bank he could buy — a snip
at £600,000.
To the pompous
ancients who then peopled the world of merchant banking, Loewenstein,
at 29, and his friends and business partners Jonathan Guinness and
Richard Cox Johnson must have seemed, with their alternative approach
to money-making, just as brash and rebellious as the Rolling Stones.
The three of them
worked tirelessly in one room, setting up deals and taking risks —
just as, across town, the Stones were sharing a house and trying to
write hits.
Yet, Loewenstein’s
home life was always deeply conservative. In 1957 he married
Josephine Lowry-Corry, granddaughter of the banker Lord Biddulph, and
they had three children.
Extraordinarily,
given the opulent life that he led from his grand house in Richmond
Park, both his sons chose a different way: one becoming a Roman
Catholic priest; the other a monk. His daughter Dora married an
Italian aristocrat.
It might be said
Loewenstein changed for ever the way the popular music industry
makes its millions. Certainly, he made a handful of scruffy musicians
incredibly rich.
Prince Rupert zu
Loewenstein - obituary
Prince
Rupert zu Loewenstein was a Bavarian aristocrat and banker who
disliked rock and roll but made The Rolling Stones very rich
5:41PM BST 21 May
2014
Prince Rupert zu
Loewenstein, who has died aged 80, was the Bavarian aristocrat who
for decades managed the financial affairs of The Rolling Stones.
Loewenstein was a
key member of the Stones’ entourage for almost 40 years. The
subfusc banker’s suits and high Roman Catholic connections which
made him such an incongruous figure amid a backstage ambience of sex,
drugs and rock and roll were in some ways deceptive: he had a lively
sense of humour, and he observed his clients’ antics with a worldly
twinkle in his eye. “He’s a bit of a showman, a bit
extraordinary,” one City colleague said of him. “He always lived
life at a very high rate.”
It was as managing
director of Leopold Joseph & Co, a small London merchant bank,
that he was first introduced to Mick Jagger by a mutual friend, the
art dealer Christopher Gibbs, in 1968 — though Loewenstein claimed
at the time never to have heard of the band. Jagger — no slouch in
financial matters himself — was increasingly angry at the handling
of the Stones’ affairs by Allen Klein, the aggressive New Jersey
accountant who had been the group’s manager since 1965 and whose
terms included a 50 per cent slice of their recording royalties.
“Half the money I’ve made has been stolen,” Jagger later told
an interviewer — and his first question to Loewenstein was whether
the skills of Leopold Joseph could extricate them from their contract
with Klein.
“I discussed
taking on the group with my partners but they were very much against
any involvement, saying it would be bad for the image of the firm,”
the prince recalled. “It was very hard to win them over, but I
finally prevailed.”
Loewenstein later
wrote that he and Jagger “clicked on a personal level. I certainly
felt that [he] was a sensible, honest person. And I was equally
certain that I represented a chance for him to find a way out of a
difficult situation. I was intrigued. So far as the Stones’ music
was concerned, however, I was not in tune with them, far from it.
Rock and pop music was not something in which I was interested ...
After the first two or three business meetings with Mick, I realised
there was something exceptional in his make-up, that his personality
was able to convert his trade as itinerant performer into something
far more intriguing.”
From then on,
Loewenstein was a particularly close personal adviser to Jagger, who
developed a liking for rubbing shoulders with high society. Shortly
after they met, Jagger helped to plan a White Ball at the
Loewensteins’ home in Holland Park, which kept neighbours awake
until a quarter to six in the morning. When one rang the police to
complain, she was told: “We can’t do anything about it, Princess
Margaret’s there.”
Loewenstein realised
that a great deal more money could be made for the band from touring:
“After reviewing a few of the basic documents, I realised [the
money] would have gone to Klein and therefore they would have
depended on what he gave them, as opposed to what the record company
or the publishing company did. They were completely in his hands.
What had also become apparent to me was that the band would have to
abandon their UK residence. If they did not do this, they could be
paying between 83 and 98 per cent of their profits in British income
tax and surtax. I selected the South of France as a suitable location
for them.”
By 1972 Loewenstein
had managed to reach a satisfactory contract with Allen Klein
(although litigation continued for a further 18 years), allowing the
Stones to record with a company of their choice. He then set himself
to find a new recording contract for them to replace the existing one
with Decca; during their European tour of 1970 he conducted what
amounted to a trade fair on their behalf from a series of hotel
bedrooms.
The prince’s
services extended not only to managing their money, negotiating their
contracts and accompanying them on tour: he once described himself as
“a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny”, while
the tabloids christened him “Rupie the Groupie”. In 1978 he was
called upon to provide an affidavit to a Toronto court as to the
extent of Keith Richards’s casual spending — $350,000 in the
previous year — as evidence that the guitarist was wealthy enough
not to commit crimes in order to feed his heroin habit.
It was the prince
who was most influential in persuading Jagger to go on touring
through the 1980s and ’90s, as relations among the group members
cooled and the wear and tear of advancing age took its toll. The
prince also stood as godfather to James, Jagger’s son by Jerry
Hall, in 1985 (the actress Anjelica Huston was godmother).
When Jagger and Hall
parted, Loewenstein masterminded the financial settlement that
followed — and remarked in a rare interview that “when families
split up you have to make it absolutely clear whose side you are on
at once”. It was due in large part to his wisdom that Jagger’s
fortune is today estimated at more than £200 million.
Rupert Louis
Ferdinand Frederick Constantine Lofredo Leopold Herbert Maximilian
Hubert John Henry zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg was born at
Palma, Majorca, on August 24 1933.
His father, Prince
Leopold, a native of Salzburg, traced descent through the royal house
of Wittelsbach from the Elector Palatine Friedrich I (1425-76), whose
son Ludwig — by a mistress, Clara Tott, whom the Elector married to
legitimise the child — became Count of Loewenstein, near Heilbronn
in what is now Baden-Wurtemberg, in 1488. Rupert’s mother was a
daughter of the Count of Treuberg, and the family’s connections
could be traced throughout the Almanack de Gotha. Non-noble forebears
included the Frankfurt financier Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of
the famous banking dynasty.
The young Rupert was
brought to England in 1940 and sent to Beaumont, the Roman Catholic
public school. Later he read History at Magdalen College, Oxford —
where he emerged as one of the glitterati of his generation — and
began his City career as a trainee with the stockbrokers Bache &
Co. He and a group of friends swiftly decided that the best way to
make serious money would be to own their own merchant bank.
Together with, among
others, Jonathan Guinness (now Lord Moyne), the exotic French Baron
Alexis de Redé, and Anthony Berry ( son of the Sunday Times
proprietor Lord Kemsley and later a Conservative MP who was killed by
the 1984 Brighton bomb), he arranged to buy Leopold Joseph & Co
from its founding family for £600,000.
The bank had been
set up in 1919 by a German-Jewish immigrant who first came to London
as a reporter for the Frankfurter Zeitung; three Joseph brothers
remained in the business, which had been operating on a very modest
scale.
Under Loewenstein’s
leadership, it rapidly made a new name for itself in lucrative
corporate finance work and investment advice for very wealthy private
clients. His success with the Rolling Stones’ account brought him a
number of other showbusiness clients, including Pink Floyd and
(before his conversion to Islam) Cat Stevens.
In 1981 the prince
left Leopold Joseph to set up his own business, Rupert Loewenstein
Ltd, based in St James’s. He took his best clients with him, and
once explained why he enjoyed working for people who had only
recently made their fortunes. New money, he said, was “much more
interesting than old. People with old money are nearly always having
to be adjusted downwards.”
Loewenstein’s own
money, both old and new, enabled him to live in grand style in later
years in a former grace-and-favour mansion, Petersham Lodge — not
far from the Jagger ménage on Richmond Hill — which he bought in
1987 for around £2 million.
But in parallel with
a life of money and parties, there was also a spiritual side to him.
He petitioned for the preservation of the Tridentine Mass — writing
to The Daily Telegraph in 1975 about its numinous beauty — and held
high office in ancient Catholic orders of chivalry: he was Grand
Inquisitor of the Constantinian Military Order of St George and
president of the British association of the Sovereign Military Order
of Malta.
Loewenstein’s
association with The Rolling Stones ended amicably in 2007 —
although his publication six years later of a memoir, A Prince Among
Stones, was said to have upset Jagger.
In the book, the
prince wrote of his relationship with the band: “All the time I
worked with the Stones I never changed my habits, my clothes or my
attitudes. I was never tempted by the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.
Although I enjoyed a good vintage wine, I was never a heavy drinker,
nor a drug-taker. I always aimed to maintain a strict discipline
backstage, for security reasons, and tried to see that the band and
the entourage did not get drunk or disorderly.
“To many outsiders
it must seem extraordinary that I was never a fan of the Stones’
music, or indeed of rock ’n’ roll in general. Yet I feel that
precisely because I was not a fan, desperate to hang out in the
studio and share in the secret alchemy of their creative processes
(something I never did since I couldn’t take the noise levels), I
was able to view the band and what they produced calmly,
dispassionately, maybe even clinically – though never without
affection.”
Prince Rupert
married, in 1957 at the London Oratory, Josephine Lowry-Corry, a
barrister’s daughter who had trained as a ballet dancer at Sadler’s
Wells until she grew too tall, then retrained as an opera singer. The
honeymoon included a visit to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth.
The Loewensteins had
two sons, Princes Rudolf and Konrad, both of whom became priests, and
a daughter, Princess Maria-Theodora (Dora), who married an Italian
count, Manfredi della Gherardesca, and became a director of her
father’s business.
Prince Rupert zu
Loewenstein, born August 24 1933, died May 20 2014
Rupert Louis
Ferdinand Frederick Constantine Lofredo Leopold Herbert Maximilian
Hubert John Henry zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, Count of
Loewenstein-Scharffeneck(24 August 1933 – 20 May 2014) was a
Spanish-born Bavarian aristocrat and the longtime financial manager
of the rock band The Rolling Stones. His affectionate nickname was
"Rupie the Groupie". Loewenstein was named to the
International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame in 2001.
A scion of the royal
houses of Wittelsbach and Löwenstein-Wertheim, Loewenstein was born
in Palma, Majorca, Spain, the son of Prince Felicien Leopold
Friedrich Ludwig Hubertus zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg
(1903–1974) and his wife, Bianca Henrietta Maria Fischler, Countess
von Treuberg (1913–1984). Both were of part-Jewish descent.Henry de
Worms, 1st Baron Pirbright was his father's maternal grandfather. Following his parents' separation, he and his mother arrived in
England in 1940. Loewenstein was educated at the Quaker St
Christopher School in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, followed by Magdalen
College, Oxford, where he studied medieval history.
Banking
After school,
Loewenstein worked as a stockbroker for Bache & Co. In 1963, he
was part of a consortium formed to buy the merchant bank Leopold
Joseph & Sons, along with fellow Oxford graduates Jonathan
Guinness, Richard Cox-Johnson and Louis Heyman.and he became a
director of the resulting firm. Leopold Joseph had previously been
family owned by the Josephs, and carried out only specialised lines
of banking business.
Following the
acquisition, the business was substantially expanded to include
advice on issues and mergers, investment advice, and particularly
currency trading. By 1971, the firm had become one of the principal
dealers in London in investment dollars. That year, it undertook a
capital raising with a target of a net £940,000 to enable further
expansion. In 1981, Loewenstein left to start his own company, Rupert
Loewenstein Ltd, where most of his clients were new money, who he
described as "much more interesting than old money. People with
old money are nearly always having to be adjusted downwards; those
with new money are much more realistic."
The Rolling Stones
Loewenstein was the
Rolling Stones' business adviser and financial manager from 1968
until 2007.
In 1968, then working in London as a merchant banker,
he was introduced to Mick Jagger by a mutual friend, art dealer
Christopher Gibbs. According to Keith Richards, Loewenstein had never
heard of Jagger before then. Jagger was of the opinion that the
Stones' then manager, Allen Klein, was not paying them everything
they were due.
Loewenstein is
credited with transforming the Stones into a "global brand and
one of the world's richest bands", in particular by encouraging
them to take into account potential tax advantages in any decisions
about where to record, rehearse or perform. He managed their
release from an existing contract, which paid them almost nothing,
and persuaded them of the tax advantages of leaving England and
moving to the south of France. He channelled their earnings through a
series of companies in the Netherlands, and got them to rehearse in
Canada, rather than the United States, to reduce their tax
bill.Richards said, "[t]he tax rate [in the U.K.] in the early
'70s on the highest earners was 83 percent, and that went up to 98
percent for investments... It was Rupert's advice that we become
non-resident".Loewenstein also copyrighted the famous red tongue
logo, and enlisted corporates sponsors such as General Electric for
tours.
Richards described
how, until they started to tour large venues in the 1980s, the Stones
did not make serious money. The first important one was the 1981–82
tour which broke box office records. By then, Loewenstein had
reorganised the band's finances so that they did not "get
cheated out of eighty percent of the takings... On a fifty-dollar
ticket, up till then, [the band got] three dollars. He set up
sponsorship and clawed back merchandising deals. He cleaned out the
scams and fiddles, or most of them. He made us viable." In a
2002 interview, Richards said of Loewenstein: "He is a great
financial mind for the market. He plays that like I play guitar. He
does things like a little oil well. And currency—you know, Swiss
francs in the morning, switch to marks in the afternoon, move to the
yen, and by the end of the day, how many dollars?"
Loewenstein never
got involved in the music. He said he preferred classical music and
never played a Stones recording by choice; if he had to listen to
rock and roll, he preferred The Beatles. Richards confirmed: "Rupert
didn't like rock and roll; he thought 'composing' was something done
with a pen and paper, like Mozart."
Loewenstein's
daughter, Princess Dora Loewenstein (Maria Theodora Marjorie
Loewenstein), wrote several first-hand accounts of life with the
Rolling Stones, whom she had known since she was a child.
Personal life and
family
On 18 July 1957,
Loewenstein married Josephine Clare Lowry-Corry (born 26 January
1931). She is the daughter of Montagu William Lowry-Corry
(1907–1977), who was a grandson of Edward O'Brien, 14th Baron
Inchiquin and Hon. Mary Constance Biddulph (1906–1991), who was a
daughter of John Michael Gordon Biddulph, 2nd Baron Biddulph.
The couple had three
children:
Rudolf Amadeus
Joseph Karl Ludwig Emmanuel (born 17 November 1957) who became a
Roman Catholic priest in the Dominican Order.
Konrad Friedrich
Ferdinand Johannes Ottakar Sylvester (born 26 November 1958) who also
became a Roman Catholic priest.He belongs to the Priestly Fraternity
of St. Peter.
Maria Theodora
Marjorie (born 11 July 1966) who has been married since 1998 to Conte
Manfredi della Gherardesca. Her godfather was Alexis von Rosenberg,
Baron de Redé (1922–2004).
They lived in
Petersham Lodge in River Lane, Petersham, London, a former
grace-and-favour mansion, purchased for about £2 million in 1987. It
is an early-18th-century house, built for the Duchess of Queensberry,
and Grade II listed by Historic England.
