With a long name, Prince Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola comes a mystery. He is the son of the painter Balthus and nephew to Pierre Klossowski. His grandmother, Baladine Klossowska, was also a painter and muse/lover of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. With a family like that, there is no way that Prince Stash de Rola can be a dull figure. He came to my radar culture due to his relationship with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, with whom he was arrested during a drug raid in 1967. It seems that Prince Stash was and is always in the right place and time. He worked with and was a band member of the great Vince Taylor, which led him to The Stones world, making him part of Paul McCartney’s social circle. In other words, if anyone was swinging in London during the summer of love, it was Prince Stash. And, of course, he made a record.
Until recently, Stash was never the subject matter but the byproduct of an exciting era, but once we look behind the curtain, we see the magician doing his work, and Stash is that magician doing magick, but with the accomplishment of the greats from that era of the European 1960s. So one looks for clues, and one of the remarkable documents that some of us have is his 45 rpm single, on a Dutch label, and highly obscure, which is on the A-side Peace, and the B-side is a recording of Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. This is a record only a few have and is rarely up for sale - there is one copy at this writing for $163 (150 Euros) on Discogs. What makes this record unique is its rareness, and there is no YouTube posting or any trace of the music online.
Last night, I had my glass of red wine (and only one glass per day) and got a buzz. My favorite local record store, Record Safari, had a copy for $60. This single has been on my mind for at least five or six years (perhaps more), and I thought it would be impossible to find. Oddly, I didn’t know the music or Prince Stash as a recording artist. So I was confronted with whether I should spend $60 on a record I knew of but never heard a bleep or musical note of, and there is no review of his music anywhere online or elsewhere. I was going to ignore the urge to buy this because that amount of money is a lot for me, and the only time I spent $60 on a record was the album Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra Plays Lionel Bart's Maggie May. But that is an album, at the very least; I would never spend $60 on two songs, especially from a figure close to a total mystery to me. So, with that logic in mind, of course, I bought the damn record.
I quickly researched the song Peace on the A-side of the record. Johnnie Dee wrote it, and the backing band is Johnnie Dee and his Dee-Troit Sounds. The song was produced by Jimmy Campbell, who is also a mystery to me. The album came out only in Denmark, on a local label from that part of the world. Prince Stash looked like Hamlet, and having this record be a Danish release was ironic.
Oddly enough, the Buffalo, New York-born American John Christian Dee somehow founded himself in Denmark, and he too has that Hamlet appearance. He released a series of 45-rpm singles in that country and was also part of the musical duo Adam & Eve in Germany. His first single in 1965 with the Dee-Troit Sounds is I Had It and I Lost. It is here and there, and nothing special of that era, but I do like the B-Side Beautiful Dreamer, which has Chris Andrews's (Yesterday Man) Ska-pop sound, and then he did a series of singles under the name Johnnie Dee. His 1967 release Jambo Saana is fake Caribbean pop with touches of my beloved Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. This shadowy figure of the Euro-pop world in 1975 stabbed his girlfriend in the back and then escaped from Jail and disappeared in France. From that until he died in 2004, it is a blank narrative. How he connected with Prince Stash in 1965 is also a mystery, and how he performed on and wrote Peace for the Prince of 60’s Bohemia is not entirely told.
I purchased the single and am considering reviewing it for my site here, but I’m having second thoughts. I’m impressed that we live in a world where the Online Internet world tosses out the mystery, and one can get anything they want at a moment’s notice. But here is a 45 rpm single that has not been digitalized for the open market, nor has anyone written a detailed review of its recording. As I sat down and gave this record a proper listen, it struck me how important a mystery is to a piece of art. We all want to remove the curtain behind the stage, such as the Wizard of Oz doing his ‘tricks,’ but do I need to expose such a mystery?
Rock or Pop Music has elements that are important to me, such as the visual aspect of that world and the unknown. In the early 1970s, I read about artists such as The New York Dolls and Television, Talking Heads, Richard Hell, and The Ramones. The writers at the time mostly wrote about the aura of such figures, which made them fascinating. I can also imagine the music in my head without hearing a note from these bands. Once the records were released, I was not disappointed, but after the masses consumed them, the mystery died a bit. It is rare now to confront a work romanticized due to one’s imagination, which is an integral part of the art or one as a viewer, listener, or participant.
Prince Stash, in 2023, is very much a figure of the online world, except there are parts of his world that are kept hidden. One can presume he is on a Stones recording, but which song? Or even on a later Beatles release. Is our imagination working, or is it a fact? At this moment, I appreciate Prince Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola for his mystery, and therefore, I don’t want to expose too much of my thoughts on his only solo recording. More likely, you will not hear it unless you spend some money, and that is part of the seduction of someone like the Prince or how one approaches legendary figures. So, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself, but without a doubt, I’m happy to have this record, and I doubt I will ever sell it off.
You should just charge a huge sum of money to allow people, only one at a time mind you, to come to your house and have one listen to the record.
I'm a sucker for a Prince Valiant haircut and the possibly unique mix of movers & shakers of the 60s scene but I also admire your sense of keeping the mystery alive