Today’s guest is Prince Stanislas Klossowski de Rola - better known to friends and fans as Prince Stash: musician, actor, poet, aristocrat, and close friend of The Rolling Stones.
The son of celebrated artist Balthus, Stash came of age in the cultural epicentre of 1960s London and Paris, living at the crossroads of la dolce vita and the burgeoning rock revolution. After sharing a stage with the Stones in their early years, Stash struck up a lifelong friendship with founding guitarist Brian Jones - a bond forged through a shared love of fashion, music, art, and women.
In 1967, that friendship would place him at the centre of one of the decade’s most infamous scandals: the Stones’ notorious drug bust that shook Swinging London and threatened to derail Stash’s entire career.
In this episode, Stash retraces his extraordinary life, from early ambitions to conquer Hollywood to his stint with rock ’n’ roll pioneer Vince Taylor, and recalls the heady ’60s in remarkable detail, offering a rare insider’s view of the Stones’ world as it seemed to almost shatter. He opens up on that “farcical” bust, how Paul McCartney shielded him from its aftershocks, and the profound effect it would ultimately have on Brian.
It’s a fantastic story, full of great friendships - he talks of John Lennon, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Anita Pallenberg, Sharon Tate - but also a meditation on alchemy and the divine, charting a life lived entirely on his own terms.
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Lip Service is produced and presented by Simon Harper.
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