Conflicts between artists and record labels absolve no one, not even the most influential bands of the 20th century. The Rolling Stones rose to prominence in an age in which corporate music was also getting its foot in the door, and their partnership with Decca Records ended up stinking of commercial greed.

This became especially clear at the time of Beggars Banquet. The East London bad boys started to favour a raunchier demeanour, and by the late 1960s, were actively diverging from the fairly family-friendly label that had been a home to their music since 1964. The studio that had refused to sign The Beatles conceded quite a generous deal for a new act and brought the blues boys to pop stardom, but the album cover for the Stones’ 1968 record became a crucial point of division.

“The fight they gave us, we dug in our heels,” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone. The cover they had prepared depicted graffiti written by him and Mick Jagger on a grimy mechanic’s toilet stall, including words like “John Loves Yoko”.

“They really wouldn’t budge. It stopped the album from coming out. Eventually, it got to be too much of a drag. It went on for nine months or so,” explained Richards, following which the Stones had to give in to change the cover, but the bad blood wasn’t swallowed.

The Stones subsequently sought to free themselves from their obligation to the label, but Decca needed one last song from them. The band sought to leave with a bang as they dumped the steaming lewd ‘Schoolboy Blues’ on the label’s doorstep, a song too obscene for Decca’s careful standards, that the Stones knew would never see the light of day.

Revenge was served in the form of Stone Age: just as the Stones were preparing to release their first creatively free album under their very own Rolling Stones Records, Decca released 12 of the band’s unreleased and B-side songs without their consent. The material consisted mostly of covers and originals recorded between 1964 and 1966, but the real slap in the face was the use of a graffiti-covered wall as the album’s cover.

Incredulous, the Stones ran infuriated ads in British music publications, reading: “Beware! Message from the Rolling Stones Re: Stone Age. We didn’t know this record was going to be released. It is, in our opinion, below the standard we try to keep up, both in choice of content and cover design.”

Despite the protest, the Stones’ fans did what Stones fans do, bringing the unwanted album to number four in the UK charts. The band’s revulsion aided the publicity of these albums, which Decca kept releasing in the form of archived compilation LPs and box sets for decades to come, from 1973’s No Stone Unturned to 2007’s Rolled Gold.

Journalist Robert Greenfield, author of the band’s biography Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile, wrote about the episode with unfiltered contempt, years later: “While the record business had already become far more corporate than it had ever been before, the entire contretemps spoke volumes about how truly vile and disgusting the industry could still be even at the very highest levels of the game.”