
52 years ago, Londoner John Pasche took Mick Jagger’s challenge and spun it into IP gold
BY REID CREAGER
John Pasche has always wanted to believe in the kindness of strangers. Little did he imagine that stranger would be Mick Jagger.
In 1970, the legendary Rolling Stones frontman showed patience with the then-25-year-old Royal College of Art student in London who was working on a design for the group’s 1970 European Tour poster. The successful result begat another collaboration that produced arguably the most recognizable and popular logo in pop culture history.
The story of the Rolling Stones’ Hot Lips logo is much more involved than an artist who drew a dramatic exaggeration of Mick Jagger’s famously infamous mouth. It involves the group’s acrimonious exit from their longtime label. It involves a London art tutor who believed in Pasche’s prodigious talents. It involves seven simple but life-changing words Jagger said to Pasche during one of their meetings at the Stones’ office on Maddox Street. It involves a Eureka moment during a routine stop at a gas station. It involves a world-famous rock ‘n’ roll band that found itself with no money as it neared its commercial and artistic zenith. It involves Jagger’s incredible business acumen and foresight. It involves some fortuitous timing. It even involves an ancient Hindu deity.
A recent Inventors Digest interview with the 77-year-old Pasche—during this 60th anniversary for the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band—verified that the tongue and lips logo is a story of talent, marketing genius and the powerful, universal impact of intellectual property.
Meeting Mick
Jagger thought Decca Records just didn’t get it. Why would it? The company had auditioned the Beatles on New Year’s Day 1962 and turned them down.
The Rolling Stones, who first signed with the label in 1963 after a recommendation from some guy named George Harrison (yeah, yeah, yeah), had tired of this association by the end of the 1960s. When they had to fill a contractual obligation with a final single in 1970, they metaphorically stuck out their tongues by releasing the horrid “Schoolboy Blues,” alternately known by an obscene title, in hopes the label wouldn’t bother releasing it.
So it wasn’t surprising that Decca—with its subsidiary label, London Records, in the United States—didn’t impress Jagger with its design efforts in connection with the group’s upcoming 1970 European Tour.
He contacted the Royal College of Art. A tutor there recommended Pasche, who was in pursuit of his Master of Arts degree and showed promise with pop art that featured bright colors.
“I think I was chosen to go along and meet Mick regarding the design of their 1970 European Tour poster because my favorite graphic format was the poster,” Pasche told Inventors Digest. “I had previously designed some at the college which were much liked.”
His first meeting with Jagger on Maddox Street, near the corner of hope and anxiety, took a turn toward the latter.
“Mick was very friendly in our meetings but was very black and white in what he liked and didn’t like,” Pasche said of that early 1970 meeting. “He always needed to go back to the band for final, joint approval on the various designs.”
Jagger was not satisfied with the artist’s effort; decades later, Pasche recalled it might have been something about the composition and/or colors. But just when he figured he was “Out of Time,” he was rejuvenated with a glimmer of hope when Jagger told him: “I’m sure you can do better, John.”
The second version—now a monument of rock history—was a vibrant amalgamation of past and present eras with its 1930s/’40s-style car, ocean liner and Concorde turbojet.
Jagger was all in. Pasche, in his final year of college, had an “in” with the world’s greatest touring band.
A branding behemoth
The letter was dated April 29, 1970.
Addressed to Pasche 19 days after the official breakup of the Beatles and mailed by the Rolling Stones’ personal assistant, Jo Bergman, it asked 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.”
As Pasche absorbed this seemingly routine request, he was unaware that Jagger was hatching a plan to brand the band. This stroke of intellectual property genius was also invention born of necessity.
The Rolling Stones, now the clear No. 1 rock group in the world, were broke.
In the documentary “My Life as a Rolling Stone,” which recently appeared on EPIX, Jagger said the group’s taxes hadn’t been paid in years.
“There was no one actively managing the Rolling Stones’ money,” he said. “The Rolling Stones had no money in the bank.”
The first move was to get more control of the product. Jagger, who had spent a year as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics, arranged a deal with Atlantic Records for the group to warehouse its own label in 1970, after its Decca/London Records contract expired.
Unique identification was also part of the plan.
Marshall Chess, former CEO of Rolling Stones Records, recalled stopping at a Shell gas station with “that big picture of a yellow shell. No letters.
“Wow! Everyone knows it’s Shell. We need a logo that stands by itself.”
In the documentary, Pasche said: “There were brandings for companies and so on, but not so much in the rock ’n roll world.” Even the most distinctive logos, such as the Beatles with the long “T” and those of KISS and Bon Jovi, use the group’s name.
Of Kali and timing
If you look up art renderings of the Hindu goddess Kali, your first impression isn’t the symbol of motherly love. Yet that’s what she is purported to be—as well as the goddess of time, doomsday and death.
She is also associated with sexuality and violence. And with Indian culture quite de rigueur in Britain at the time, Jagger was enamored of her.
“At a meeting with Mick at his home in late 1970, he showed me an illustration of Kali,” Pasche told Inventors Digest. “Her pointed tongue sticking out of her mouth was an instant spark for the idea of the logo, as it symbolized rebellion and anti-establishment—which I thought was perfect for the band.”
It didn’t hurt that the protruding lips reminded many people of Jagger. Pasche left the meeting and quickly went to work.
“After a week or so, I returned to Mick’s house with three alternative angles of the illustration,” he said. “We both decided on the version that you see today.”
The logo first appeared on VIP passes for the Rolling Stones’ concert at London’s Marquee club on March 26, 1971. The worldwide public saw it for the first time on the inner sleeve of the album “Sticky Fingers,” released on April 23, 1971.
“I don’t know why I thought (the album) should have a logo,” Jagger recalled on the EPIX documentary. But he knew he loved Pasche’s final design: “It related to the band. It had a connection, color, (expletive) you, funkiness, originality.”
Timing is everything in so many aspects of life. The logo’s mainstream debut was no different.
The group’s first album on its own label featured another innovative touch, and on the cover: an actual working zipper, conceived by Andy Warhol, on a pair of tight jeans. (The concept was expensive to produce and later replaced with just an outer photograph of the zipper and jeans.)
Musically, the album is generally regarded as one of the Rolling Stones’ best—with mainstays such as “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses” and “Dead Flowers.”
This combination of marketing flash and product quality ushered in a new era for what was already a superstar group. The tongue and lips were going to laugh all the way to the bank—to an extent that few, if any, could have foreseen.
A different IP world
Pasche’s immediate post-logo life was productive, albeit hardly lucrative.
“Leaving college in 1970, I was broke and started work as a junior art director at an advertising agency, and was designing the Stones tour posters in the evenings and weekends,” he said. “The tour posters and logo were a great start to my commercial portfolio and helped me get other commissions within the music business.”
Designing the historic logo hadn’t made him rich; he was paid £50 (about $1,000 today), with a £200 bonus from the group a couple years later.
This was a time when intellectual property was a largely ignored/unknown concept, outside of major corporations. It wasn’t until 1976 that he began receiving royalties for his work for the band, when an official contract was drawn up between him and the Rolling Stones’ law firm Musidor B.V.
In a 2020 New York Times interview, Pasche recalled his share as 10 percent of net income on sales of merchandising displaying the logo. He said he made “a few thousand pounds” in total royalties until 1982, when he sold his copyright to Musidor for £26,000.
Pasche used the proceeds to buy a cozy home in London’s Muswell Hill district. He told the Times “I’d probably be living in a castle now” if he had kept the copyright but appears to have no regrets—especially because he made what seemed to be a sound decision based on a fuzzy area in copyright law.
At that time, the possibility existed that if a company had been using something for a number of years and it was recognized as part of the company (i.e, the tongue logo), it could try to assume copyright. Pasche’s lawyer told him he could lose in court, so they negotiated a fee.
Today, given the logo’s staying power and commercial presence on everything from T-shirts to massive stage sets—as well as hundreds of design variations themed to specific events and locales—the value of United States Patent and Trademark Office Trademark With Serial No. 73,089,572 may be impossible to quantify.
Pasche doesn’t have a guess; neither did a couple of intellectual property experts we contacted. (The Nike swoosh logo has a reported value of $26 billion.)
The logo’s impact extends beyond rock ‘n’ roll. No less an authority than Tommy Hilfiger was quoted as saying, “I think that tongue is as important as any fashion logo in the world.”
The lesson for inventors and entrepreneurs about the importance of intellectual property is obvious.
“Like the first few bars of ‘Start Me Up’ are so recognizable to the ear, the tongue logo is every bit as recognizable,” said IPWatchdog founder Gene Quinn. “Whenever I see the tongue logo, the first thing that pops into my mind is Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones … that is precisely what a good logo is supposed to do.
“This powerful association should be a huge lesson for all creators. Creation can be valuable, but you can only extract that value if you have some form of IP protection. As we continue to transition into a new media environment no longer dominated by legacy content producers, creating and protecting these types of assets is essential.
“You never know what the next iconic logo will be, so treating everything like it may be valuable makes all the sense in the world for creators.”
Added Bruce Berman, founder of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding:
“An independent creator is not typically in the position to negotiate. However, he or she would be surprised at what rights a buyer is willing to allow them to retain if they just ask in the right way. Retaining some rights, even if they do not seem very meaningful today, can pay surprising returns.”
Humbled and happy
A key component of the logo’s ever-climbing value is the fact that 52 years after its creation, it remains in the public eye at live venues thanks to a band that has relentless commitment to what it does and the seeming desire to die as active performers.
Who could have foreseen such energetic, historic longevity?
“I think part of the success and longevity of the logo is that the band kept touring and has used the logo constantly in various configurations throughout the years,” Pasche said.
He doesn’t dwell on the what-if financial aspects of the logo. His creation has helped him enjoy a comfortable life, a way to express himself creatively in many disciplines, and some fame as well.
He noted that “I retained the copyright to the four Rolling Stones tour poster designs I did, which have provided me with an income over the years. A couple of years ago, I asked permission to create and sell sketches of the logo, which was granted—and, in fact, the Rolling Stones’ London Store on Carnaby Street bought several to sell in the shop.”
And In 2008, the Victoria and Albert Museum in England acquired his original artwork for the tongue and lips logo for $92,500.
Pasche’s phenomenally successful life of creative projects and treasured personal and professional associations does not have a price tag.
His Rolling Stones projects led him to other commissions within the music business. He has worked with artists ranging from Paul McCartney to The Who to the Stranglers to Dr. Feelgood, winning numerous awards.
He was the art director for Chrysalis Records for 10 years. He was creative director at The South Bank Centre, working on art exhibitions, classical music and ballet productions. He now works from his studio at home as a freelance graphic designer (with sketches and posters available at rollingstoneslogo.com and rollingstonesposters.co.uk., respectively).
If he will always be best known as the man who created the tongue-and-lips logo, that’s fine with him.
“I have always believed, from the day I designed it, that it just felt right as a symbol for the band. I am just happy that people seem to like it, too.”
*******
John Pasche
Born: Harpenden, UK
Lives: Near Leatherhead, UK
Family: Wife, Fiona; sons Oliver and Matthew
Education: Eastbourne Grammar School; Eastbourne Art School; Brighton College of Art; Royal College of Art, London
Favorite song: “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens
Favorite Rolling Stones song: “Paint It, Black”
Favorite book: “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens
Favorite quote: From British actor/comedian Spike Milligan’s gravestone—“I told you I was ill”
*************
Paint it, Black
The logo is associated with marketing genius, in part because of its versatility. It has been modified and adorned with everything from the American flag to baseballs in connection with themed events.
After drummer Charlie Watts died last year, the group announced during its “No Filter Tour” that it was changing its logo design from red to black in tribute to the “heartbeat of the group.”
********
All the Rage
A 2018 OnePoll survey reported that the Rolling Stones logo is the most iconic T-shirt design of all time. The top 10:
Rolling Stones “tongue and lip”
Che Guevara
Hard Rock Café
Nike swoosh/Just Do It
Superman
Adidas (with stripes on the sleeves)
Frankie Say Relax
Mickey Mouse
I “heart” NY
Coca Cola