Mick Jagger Denies Giving Permission for The Rolling Stones' Song to Be Used for Melania Trump Documentary

The Rolling Stones vocalist, Mick Jagger (Instagram @mickjagger)

JAKARTA - News of the involvement of The Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger in Donald Trump's wife's documentary project, titled "Melania", sparked a controversy.

Jagger's side has emphatically denied giving permission for the use of the song "Gimme Shelter" in the film, despite the film's producers claiming otherwise.

The controversy began when Melania's documentary producer, Marc Beckman, stated that Jagger was directly involved in the licensing process. However, the statement was immediately refuted by an internal source close to the frontman.

The Rolling Stones' official representative confirmed that the British band had nothing to do with the song licensing deal.

"The licensing agreement was made exclusively between ABKCO copyright holders and producer Melania. The band has nothing to do with it at all," said an official representative of The Rolling Stones, quoted by the Guardian, Sunday, March 1.

The problem is rooted in the ownership of the rights to broadcast the old works of The Rolling Stones. Since the early 1970s, the rights to the catalog of recordings before 1971 - including the songs "Gimme Shelter", "Satisfaction", to "Sympathy for the Devil" - were controlled by the company founded by the late Allen Klein, ABKCO.

Contractually, ABKCO has the legal authority to license the songs without the direct consent of the band members.

Although relations between the band and ABKCO have improved over the past 50 years, the use of songs for political or controversial figures, for The Rolling Stones remains a sensitive issue.

Jagger himself is actually known to be quite open about the commercialization of his work. The rock n' roll star's vehement rebuttal is suspected to have been triggered by the long history of feud between The Rolling Stones and Donald Trump.

From the 2016 to 2020 campaigns, Trump often played Stones songs at his political rallies despite being strongly prohibited by the band.

The peak occurred in 2020, where The Rolling Stones collaborated with a performance rights organization to block the use of their catalog from the Trump campaign through legal channels.

This feud even happened long before Trump entered politics. In December 1989, in Atlantic City, Keith Richards was rumored to have almost attacked Trump with a knife because Trump broke a contract deal to promote a concert.

"Keith pulled out his knife, slammed it down on the table and said, 'What am I paying you for? Should I go over there and fire him myself? One of us has to get out of this building - him or us'," recalled promoter Michael Cohl of the incident. Trump's expulsion from his own building at the time.

Until this news was released, ABKCO has not given an official statement regarding the license dispute for the song in the Melania Trump documentary.