The Rolling Stones are one of the greatest musical groups of all time, with so many classic songs that have lost none of their appeal half a century later. It was not just their music that left an impact though, but also their famous logo with the red tongue and lips. In fact, it was voted as the most iconic t-shirt design in history.
The runner ups were the Hard Rock Cafe logo and Che Guevara’s silhouette, and another musical contender was the cover of Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, but the Stones won out in the end. The iconic mouth logo made its debut on the cover of their 1971 album Sticky Fingers, and its designer, John Pasche, was only 25 when he was commissioned to make it.
Pasche was studying at the Royal College of Art and had already worked with the Stones on a poster for their tour which was coming up. Mick Jagger noticed the quality of his work and decided to give him the challenge of coming up with a logo for Rolling Stones Records, the new company they formed to put out the Stones’ music following their departure from Decca. Pasche was asked to make “a logo or symbol which may be used on notepaper, as a program cover and as a cover for the press book”.
The legend goes that it was Mick Jagger’s mouth that the logo was modeled after, but Pasche clarifies that saying, “A lot of people ask me if it was based on Mick Jagger’s lips – and I have to say it wasn’t, initially. But it might have been something that was unconscious and also really dovetailed into the basic idea of the design. It was a number of things.” Whether or not it captured Jagger’s lips, it definitely captured the band’s spirit. Pasche credits its enduring appeal to being a “universal statement, I mean sticking out your tongue at something is very anti-authority, a protest really… various generations have picked that up.”