Could the Rolling Stones drag wild horses away, though? Photograph: MJ Kim/Getty
The Rolling Stones are the rock outlaws that just keep on giving. Days after Keith Richards caused global uproar by admitting to paying his late father the ultimate tribute by snorting him, they're causing trouble again.
This time, however, the drug scandal involves downers, specifically plans to sedate 300 horses stabled near the Belgrade Hippodrome because they might be disturbed by Brown Sugar and, er, Wild Horses. Bloggers worldwide are enraged.
Once again, the Stones find themselves swimming against the tide of the moral majority. But this time they're not the counter-cultural hipsters, rather they're the big baddies. Being nice to animals (once the food chain is put aside at least) is currently such an ethical no brainer that it's a cause pumped full of celebrity nutrients.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals website has everyone from Joss Stone to Trent Reznor lining up to condemn one global practice or another. Pink, meanwhile, has made an enemy of everyone from Prince William to each and every Australian sheep farmer in her one-woman quest to save the animal kingdom.
Are these people using their celebrity responsibly, or just jumping on a bandwagon to line their star with a bit of moral goodness? As a quick-fix route to good publicity, animal cruelty is only marginally less obvious than Climate Change - especially now that it no longer appears fashionable to care about world poverty.
But rock'n'roll is supposed to be a practice completely lacking a moral centre. It's the music of the devil, and will Satan really spare a few fluffy bunnies come judgement day?
Let's face it, which would you rather have: Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat, or the Rakes press-releasing a story about how they turned down a Burberry advert?
Madonna consistently condones bullfighting and foxhunting and it never seems to do much harm to her career or the consciences of the people who buy her records. If rockstars are supposed to live outrageous and decadent lives so we don't have to, can we really then be outraged when they cross a line? Or, in other words, can it ever be justified to turn a blind eye to a spot of animal cruelty if the tunes are good enough?
The sad truth of the matter is, though, like most things in Stones lore these days, the horses are getting a jab not out of some grand artistic gesture, but due to reasons of business; the gig won't go ahead if the animals aren't pacified.
That said, Keith probably thinks he's doing the horses a favour by giving them a chance to trip out on a free dose of Bensedin, but there you go.
