Artist Ruby Mazur, who created the Rolling Stones’ famous tongue logo, claims frontman Mick Jagger is a “very bad guy,” who left him so depressed that he considered suicide.
Mazur, who has a decades-long feud with Jagger, reacted to the suicide of L’Wren Scott with a scathing post on his Facebook page, which he has since deleted. He described Jagger to Page Six as a “very egotistical, self centered, ‘Mick Mick Mick’ kind of person.”
“I feel for [L’wren],” Mazur says, even though he’d never met her. “Had I not been as strong, with great friends, I might have hung myself too.”
Mazur met Jagger in the 1970s in London, and created the original “mouth and tongue” artwork for the “Tumbling Dice” album. Jagger paid him $10,000 for the art at the time to use for the cover. Since then, the image has been used on Stones merchandise and become one of the most recognizable logos in pop culture.
Mazur says he asked Jagger repeatedly to give him trademark rights in order to reap fair earnings for his work, but says Jagger brushed him off. The artist then grew depressed.
“In the late ’80s, I was living in New York, going to the clubs and being introduced as the creator of the ‘mouth and tongue’ for the Stones, and then go home to my dumpy apartment. I was balls-off-my-ass broke, having created the most famous logo in the world,” said Mazur.
“I tried to fill my apartment with gas. If it wasn’t [for] my brother calling me, I would have been where L’Wren was. When I hear [Mick] say ‘I’m her soul mate, [I say], ‘You’re full of s**t.’ If you were her soul mate, and she was $6 million in debt, what is that to Mick Jagger? Nothing!”
Mazur, who’ll exhibit his work at Mr. Musichead Gallery in LA in August, tried to sue Jagger for trademark infringement in the ’90s, but too much time had elapsed. It was estimated he could have reaped more than $100 million from his art.
Jagger’s rep told us, “This person made a business deal decades ago. How sad and contemptible that they would use this time of personal loss to gain attention.”