# Stepney/Knightsbridge Allusion in Stones' "Play With Fire" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 14, 2007, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333 "2007-11-14T03:51:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2007, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/1 "2007-11-14T03:51:19Z")
I’ve only been to London once in my life, and don’t have nearly enough of a fell for the city’s different districts to know what Mick Jagger was getting at when he said a lady was getting her kicks in Stepney, not in Knightsbridge any more. I know Knightsbridge is a high rent district, the place where you’ll find Harrod’s… so, presumably that’s where I suppose you’d have expected to find CONVENTIONAL rich girls spending their time and money. But what did Stepney connote in the Sixties? What would it mean for a rich girl to abandon Knightsbridge to spend her time there. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/2 "2013-02-20T20:15:26Z")
This is a VERY old thread that I created ages ago, but since I never got a single answer, I thought I’d ask again. When Mick Jagger contrasts Stepney with Knightsbridge, what is he implying? What was going on in each district, back in the Sixties? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2013, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/3 "2013-02-20T20:18:53Z")
Stepney has always been an area with a large immigrant population, with the associated image of poverty and crime, to contrast it with Knightsbridge, the tonier part of town, with high-end shops and the like. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/4 "2013-02-20T23:50:22Z")
Yes, Stepney has long been a poor, crime ridden part of the town - the home of the true Cockneys, indeed - but I must confess the line always puzzled me a bit. I don’t know why a rich girl, even if slumming and looking for cheap thrills would look in _Stepney_. Stepney crime (at least as I understand the stereotype) would not have been the fun sorts of crime: it would be drunks, petty and not so petty thievery and mugging, and cheap prostitutes. I suppose there would have been drugs in Stepney, but I should not have though it would have been a good place for someone with money to go looking for them. (I knew people who did go looking for drugs in London in the 1960s, and I am pretty sure they were going to the West End.) Surely a rich woman looking for illicit drugs, sex or gambling, would have been looking in Soho or maybe Chelsea, rather than Stepney. The only interpretation I can think of that makes much sense is that she might have found herself a working-class Cockney stud down there. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/5 "2013-02-21T00:11:11Z")
Mick was probably going for a blatant “ends of the spectrum” comparison, not a more nuanced reading. ---
**Author:** ![cid4houses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@cid4houses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cid4houses)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/6 "2014-08-12T04:38:17Z")
I think the meaning was more like Bob Dylan’s sing Like a Rolling Stone, how a wealthy girl/woman can have all the finest things, but then, fall "You’ve gone to the finest schools all right, Miss Lonely But you know you only used to get juiced in it **And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it** You said you’d never compromise With the mystery tramp, but now you realize He’s not selling any alibis As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes And ask him do you want to make a deal? How does it feel How does it feel **To be on your own** With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone? " Similar to that, the warning is to the daughter who may turn out like her mother, getting her kicks in Stepney, a few notches down from Knightsbridge: **"Well, you’ve got your diamonds and you’ve got your pretty clothes And the chauffeur drives your car You let everybody know** But don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire **Your mother she’s an heiress, owns a block in Saint John’s Wood And your father’d be there with her If he only could** But don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire **Your old man took her diamond’s and tiaras by the score Now she gets her kicks in Stepney Not in Knightsbridge anymore** So don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire Now you’ve got some diamonds and you will have some others **But you’d better watch your step, girl** **Or start living with your mother** So don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire So don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2014, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stepney-knightsbridge-allusion-in-stones-play-with-fire/426333/7 "2014-08-12T04:57:35Z")
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