Not fade away: Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Independent.co.uk  Web  

It's not very rock'n'roll, but Mick Jagger, the man who brought us 'Sympathy for the Devil', supermodel girlfriends and skin-tight jeans, recently acquired OAP status. So has he mellowed with age? James Mottram finds out.

Before Mick Jagger enters the hotel room, I'm half expecting to be reminded of the opening line of The Rolling Stones' old number "Mother's Little Helper". You know the bit, as Jagger whines in that unmistakable voice of his, "What a drag it is getting old". This has been, after all, a watershed year for the Stones' lead singer. Turning 65 in July, all those jokes about the wrinkly rocker being old enough to collect his pension finally came true. Sir Mick – as he became in 2003 – is now officially an OAP. Not that he's ready to curl up with his cocoa just yet.

It's around 2pm when he finally arrives, a good half-hour late. "I didn't go to bed until five o'clock," he says, with a measure of pride, perhaps because it runs contrary to the image painted of him in the tabloids by his ex-wife Jerry Hall, that of a couch potato who likes an early night. He had spent the night partying with the other Stones in Berlin; if it got out of hand, it doesn't show. While the excesses of a rock'n'roll lifestyle may have taken their toll on his fellow band member Keith Richards, Jagger looks in remarkable shape. Rather like his slightly sucked-in cheeks, Jagger's torso, I imagine, is almost concave, as if he's had the flesh vacuumed out of him.

The Dartford-born singer puts his preternaturally skinny physique down to being raised in the aftermath of the Second World War. "It's the diet we had when we .........  were children," he smiles. "There was very little food, basically, and no junk food and no sugar." Never mind that his father, Joe, was a games teacher and relatively affluent compared to some. "Yeah, but that didn't get you any more food," he adds. "Teachers don't earn much money. Not to labour the point, but they think this is one reason why our generation doesn't get fat – unless you drink lots of beer, of course."

While the only things plump about him are those famous lips – more pink than bright red, as the Stones marketing might have us believe – he says "there's no secret" to staying fit. "You just have to do a bit of work when you get over 30. You have to go to the gym. Before 30, you don't really have to worry." Dressed in a striped shirt, lilac jumper and black jeans, lines already clustering around those ice-blue eyes, Jagger wisely makes no attempt to look younger by dressing up in rock-star clobber.

This is the third time I've encountered Jagger, though it's as if I've been in the presence of three different men. The first was pure accident, as I glimpsed him mooching around Selfridges' furniture department about five years ago. Making no attempt to conceal his identity with sunglasses or the like, he looked disarmingly ordinary – perhaps that's why he was able to browse through the store almost unnoticed. The second time, I saw the side most of us know: Jagger the Showman, doing what he does best. It was on stage during the Stones' recent A Bigger Bang tour, a two-year marathon jaunt around the globe that, after reportedly taking $558m, has become the highest-grossing tour of all time.

If you read anything about Jagger, it usually centres on his remarkable stage energy, undiluted despite his advancing years. Even now, there's still something animal about him in the spotlight. Does he see performance as an almost sexual act? "Is it like sex?" he ponders. "I don't know. Is there an orgasmic moment? Not that there necessarily has to be in sex. It's a different kind of thing. Often times, you have to be more calculated about what you do." It recalls Truman Capote's comment in light of touring with the band; that everything he saw "had been coolly and efficiently manufactured by the Stones and their managers". You don't get to last 46 years in the music business by leaving things to chance.

It's Jagger's vim and vigour that fuels Shine a Light, the band's first concert movie since 1983's Let's Spend The Night Together, which has just been released on DVD. Directed by long-time Stones fan Martin Scorsese, it captures the band's gig at New York's Beacon Theatre, a pit-stop during the Bigger Bang tour. Even with Scorsese's involvement, it doesn't come close to touching the likes of the notorious fly-on-the-wall documentary Cocksucker Blues, which detailed the band's drug-fuelled 1972 US tour, or Gimme Shelter, the seminal account of the 1969 Altamont gig when a Hell's Angel stabbed a fan to death. Not that Jagger wanted another behind-the-scenes documentary. "It's a bit of a cliché, Marty and I felt, doing the backstage stuff. Everyone's done that."

If the film is primarily a straight-up concert movie, it does hint at what a giant corporate machine The Rolling Stones have become, with Jagger leading the charge. One early shot sees him sitting in First Class, sipping champagne and working on the set-list for the show. As tongue-in-cheek as it is, it highlights a core truth: much of the Stones' success comes down to Jagger micro-managing the band's business affairs. As he puts it, "I don't think anyone else in the band is the slightest bit interested in that part of it. As long as it's successful." It was he who pushed the Stones into becoming the first band to truly exploit the money to be made from tours and merchandise.

Estimates vary, but Jagger's now worth in the region of £150m – and it's certainly convenient to think of the former economics student as an omniscient control freak, a man the US press dubbed "the greatest businessman in rock'n'roll history". In person, he's aloof and wary, not.........  the charming stumble-drunk that is Keith Richards. Rarely given to introspection, he's uncomfortable being interviewed. Thus, in Kevin Macdonald's documentary Being Mick, showing him up close and personal with his numerous children, it was almost a given that this was an entirely manufactured exercise. Or as Jagger explains, slipping into a Nazi commandant voice as he does so, "It was all within my control."

It's understandable, given how little control he has over the reams of tabloid column inches his life has generated. Jagger has been painted as so many different personas: the gangly, blues-loving teen, the Crowley-esque dabbler in diabolism (inspired by the classic track "Sympathy for the Devil"), the sexually promiscuous rock star (dating everyone from Carla Bruni to Sophie Dahl), and the cricket-loving country gent. As he puts it, "People seem to find it hard to accept that you can be several people at the same time." Not least playing a gyrating hipster on stage. "Of course it's a different persona," he argues. "If you came to a dinner party as your stage persona, he wouldn't be a very welcome guest!"

Currently dating the stylist L'Wren Scott, who is more than two decades his junior, Jagger likes to promote himself as the doting father. There is Karis, who came from his brief affair with the singer Marsha Hunt; Jade, from his first marriage to Bianca; his four children with Jerry Hall – Elizabeth, 24, James, 23, Georgia, 16, and Gabriel, 11. Then there's nine-year-old Lucas, the product of a three-month affair with the Brazilian model Luciana Morad that effectively ended his two decades together with Hall. At one point, when discussing the band's former bassist Bill Wyman, he tells me,  "I saw him at my kid's 16th birthday party." The mind boggles at what this bash was like – Jagger playing responsible parent to a bunch of rowdy teens is an amusing prospect.

Now nearly teetotal, there's nothing he likes more than eight hours sleep a night and Jagger is far removed from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, who lived fast and died young. "Most people did survive," he counters. "It's how you came out the other side and what shape you're in, I suppose." In Jagger's case, he'd been a whipping boy for the establishment – after the Stones became involved in a landmark drugs bust when Richards' Sussex mansion was raided in 1967. "Looking back it was very funny," he reflects, "but it wasn't at the time very funny. It completely took over our lives creatively. We couldn't do this or that. You had to spend all your time dealing with the police. We definitely were being targeted. It was quite a common thing really."

For the record, Jagger doesn't believe narcotics were particularly helpful in the songwriting process that he and Richards got down to a fine art. "I think they're overrated as a creative method," he says. Certainly, having watched his former band member, Brian Jones, head down a path into narcotic-fuelled oblivion before he wound up dead in a swimming pool, Jagger has been wise to remain relatively restrained. Far more dangerous to him was the aftermath of the Altamont gig. It was revealed earlier this year that a bunch of Hell's Angels plotted to kill Jagger after he sacked them as stage security following the concert stabbing. Plotting to raid his Long Island property by boat, their plan was foiled when a storm nearly sunk their craft. Yet in many ways, this sort of incident only serves to further the media mystique that surrounds Jagger and the Stones.

"I think journalism helped make the Stones dangerous and respectable all at the same time," he says. "After you've been around for 10 or 15 years, you can't be either a) new or b) subversive. People that try to be subversive for more than 10 years, you'll never get anywhere. So people get used to that whole idea. By the mid-1970s, it was very difficult. That's why punk tried to remake this subversive rock moment." So how does he see rock'n'roll now? "It's another time, but there are people still doing what we did. There are tons of bands, looking like they're playing guitars! Millions of them. I see them all the time." .........  

Another side to Jagger is his movie work. Shine a Light aside, Jagger has enjoyed a rather indifferent career as a movie producer, beginning in 2001 with the Second World War code-cracking thriller Enigma for his company Jagged. This year, he produced The Women, a remake of the 1939 George Cukor comedy starring Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford. Despite a cast including Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Eva Mendes, the film took just $26m in the US and garnered some scathing reviews ("a witless, straining mess," said the New York Times). "It gives me a different outlet," he explains, vaguely, when I ask him why he does it.

One can't help but think that Jagger is in it merely to dabble – rather like his four solo albums, including 2001's much-maligned Goddess in the Doorway, or his intermittent acting career. While his screen debut as a debauched rock star in Performance was hardly stretching him, his follow-up as the lead in 1970s outlaw story Ned Kelly left him looking faintly ridiculous in a wispy beard and iron helmet. Since then, his roles, from a time-travelling bounty hunter in Freejack to a cross-dressing cabaret owner in Bent, have been idiosyncratic to say the least.

So what attracts him to a part? "I don't know," he shrugs. "Sometimes I get offered little quirky roles and if I like the idea and I feel good at the time, I'll just do them. You never know how a film is going to turn out. There can be great people involved and it can turn out rubbish, so it's always a leap in the dark." Still, it's understandable why he does it: Jagger, by nature a performer, can't always be on stage. He is certainly aware of just how addictive it is. "You don't really want to be doing it all the time. Like when you're young, you think if you're not having sex, you're wasting your time. But as you get older you realise everything has its place."

It's the same thing with performance, he says. "You don't want to be thinking, 'I'm not performing tonight. Why am I not performing? I'm just going out to dinner with my friends – I should be on stage somewhere!' So it's a great thing to do but you don't want to be doing it all the time. But a lot of people are like that – a lot of actors. They do eight shows a week on stage. It's addictive. And if they don't go straight into the next one, they don't think that their life's worth living. I mean, you go to dinner with some comedians and they're trying out their jokes on you. They're still on. I'm not saying I'm boring, but you have to have a regular life. You don't want to be a performer all the time. You don't want me on the table singing."

It must be strange for Jagger, who now has homes all over the world – from the Loire Valley to Mustique and beyond – to realise how far he's come. After the Stones' first single, their 1963 cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On", Jagger admits he had no conception the band would last the next two years, let alone any further. "You didn't expect the work to go on and keep coming. You just do it for a year or two ... but it wasn't like we were going to break up or anything." Yet the band came close to implosion in the 1980s, when Jagger began to pursue a solo career and he and Richards began squabbling over songwriting credits. In the end, after Jagger's 1988 US solo tour was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, the Stones embarked on their hugely successful campaign to promote Steel Wheels, arguably the last album of any value they produced.

The Stones have lasted a further two decades, despite the departure in 1993 of Wyman, and show no signs of stopping. Does he know why they stuck it out?

"Because we were successful," he says. "I don't think we stayed together only for the success, but if we hadn't had the success, we wouldn't have stayed together. You need those two things – the love of doing it and the love of other people wanting you to do it." While Jagger claims he doesn't "feel there's a pressure to go on being sexy", I wonder if he wakes up at night, worrying about not being able to deliver on stage?

"Sure," he replies, "but don't look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today!" Now that's sound advice from Sir Mick.

curl up with his cocoa....i like that.

Don't worry Micky!  You will always be SEXY!

Graeme Thomson
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT
The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008


It's one of the great lines: 'I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.' Fifty years on, Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues' remains the ultimate in outlaw chic, though the competition is fierce: think of Tom Dooley, Stagger Lee, Leroy Brown and sundry other repeat offenders.

Murder ballads are the shabby street corner where death and music most frequently convene, but once your eyes adjust to the gloom you can spot the Reaper stalking every shadowy outpost of the pop empire. While writing my new book, I Shot a Man in Reno, I tracked death through the sodden sob songs of the late Fifties; the wild, exploratory leaps into the great beyond made by the Beatles and other acid-fuelled pioneers; the bereavement ballads of Celine Dion and Mariah Carey; the sorrow 'n' suicide siren call of emo and its spiritual forebears; and gangsta rap, rewriting in blood the swaggering violence of the blues.

But, as some of its leading artists reach their sixties and seventies, can we really expect popular music to handle the stark realities of death and ageing? I tried to answer these questions in the book, inviting several acclaimed songwriters to lend a hand. Here's some of what they had to say.

Mick Jagger
Death tunes: Paint it Black (1966), Sympathy for the Devil (1968), Gimme Shelter (1969)

'We're in a bit of a pioneer area, because pop music doesn't really deal with this as a major topic. You're writing within certain conventions and you have to recognise what they are. For years, the three-and-a-half-minute pop song has been an absurd convention, but we're still in it, more or less, and there are many, many others that we tend to follow - and one is that it's not conventional to write about too depressing subjects. Some days you might feel that the dark tunnel might engulf you, but I don't think a whole album of that is going to amuse anyone. There's no harm in going there for a moment, but you don't want to be there all the time - unless you've got no option. If you're an optimistic person, you want to be able to reveal all sides. I think underneath your questions you might be saying: 'Well, your music's not very grown up!', but I write what I feel. It's pop music. It's supposed to be fun! If it's sometimes a bit immature, then maybe that's what I'm like some of the time, but I hope it's not immature all the time.'


Richard Thompson
Death tunes: Meet on the Ledge (1969), Did She Jump or Was She Pushed? (1982), Dad's Gonna Kill Me (2007)

'Coming from the folk tradition, it's just a natural thing that a song would have death as a subject matter. In a way, popular music seems strange because it doesn't talk about death that much. Instead, you hear this sort of endless Peter Pan-ish attempt to keep on strutting. A band like the Stones can still put on a good show but there's this sense that they're not dealing with life, they're just shoving it under the carpet. As a songwriter, it's part of your job to look for things that are slightly troubling. Sometimes it can be unsettling for the audience, but because it's entertainment they will go through that process. They almost like to be unsettled. It's important to remember that a song about death is a song about life. The sentence has a full stop, without which it wouldn't be complete and would have no meaning. To include the end of things gives shape to whatever you're writing about. As I get older I start to write those kinds of songs. It's important to understand how to live and it's important to understand how to die.'

Ice T
Death tunes: Lethal Weapon (1989), Body Count (1991), Cop Killer (1992)

'When West Coast rap started we had to make music that catered to a gangsta audience. The lyrics weren't that far from the truth, but I still saw it as entertainment. It's what I call Gangsta Tales, like watching a western or Goodfellas. Look at Stephen King. He's not writing about his life but he can continually come up with book after book on death. It's the same if you listen to a Mobb Deep album. About a thousand people get killed, which we know isn't true, so it's kind of like who writes about it in the most real way and makes you feel it and sends the chills through your body, y'know? But the shock value of singing about death is absolutely over with. Once people get acclimatised to it, it doesn't have the same impact.'

Will Oldham
Death tunes: You Will Miss Me When I Burn (1994), Death to Everyone (1999), I See A Darkness (1999)

'The first song that I remember dealing with death in a pretty direct way was "Ebony Eyes". When I was four or five, I listened to the Everly Brothers over and over again, acting out all the songs with the little plastic figurines I got for my birthday, and that was the last song on the record. I could tell that it was a sad song, but I didn't have any idea how sad. It's still something that I value a lot; music that gets in there. If I'm wondering about death and scared about life, then to find some song that addresses it is like, "Well, if you feel that way the best thing might be to either obliterate consciousness, or to destroy yourself completely...." That's not the kind of music that I like to listen to. But if someone deals with the end of conscious existence in such a way that they're not just trying to ruin your day with it, then it can be pretty great.'

Neil Finn
Death tunes: Hole in the River (1986); She Goes On (1991); Anytime (2001)

'Sometimes it feels like the world is just trying to get by and not take any notice of the misery and horror that unfolds on a daily basis. Some days it just hits you: "Ah fuck it, let's find out the worst of what's going on and we'll walk out the other side better people for it." The songs that I was writing around the time [of ex-Crowded House drummer] Paul Hester's suicide in 2005 are probably all influenced by that event - in a good way, I hope, rather than a morbid or maudlin way. There's nothing like death to haul things into focus when it happens close to you. It's interesting to suggest the idea that your life is hanging in the balance at any given moment. And actually, it's not gloomy or morbid to think so - it's useful and life-affirming.'

Paul McCartney
Death tunes: Eleanor Rigby (1966), Maxwell's Silver Hammer (1969), The End of the End (2007)

'When I was a kid I was very lucky to have a real cool dad, a working-class gent, who always encouraged us to give up our seat on the bus for old people. This led me into going round to pensioners' houses. It sounds a bit goody-goody, so I don't normally tell too many people. There were a couple of old ladies and I used to go round and say, "Do you need any shopping done?" These lonely old ladies were something I knew about growing up, and that was what "Eleanor Rigby" was about - the fact that she died and nobody really noticed. I knew this went on. I wrote about death again on 'The End of the End' [on Memory Almost Full], but this time it's about me! I was interested in the Irish wake idea - jokes being told and stories of old - rather than the solemn, Anglican, doom-laden event. But death isn't a subject that anyone visits that much. It doesn't make a great song to dance to.'

• I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease and General Misadventure, as Related in Popular Song (Continuum, £9.99) is out now. Graeme Thomson is a regular contributor to OMM.

Strange musical deaths
The Gift - Velvet Underground, 1968

Waldo Jeffers mails himself in a box to his long-distance squeeze. She fetches metal cutters to slice through the tape - and Waldo's skull.

Lord Ronald - Alasdair Roberts, 2005

Folk standard in which our hero's lover feeds him poisoned eels caught from his 'father's black ditch'. Death quickly ensues.

Mein Teil - Rammstein, 2004

The true tale of Armin Meiwes, who, in 2001, castrated Bernd Brandes (they cooked and shared his penis) before he killed Brandes and ate the rest of him over 10 months.

"It's supposed to be fun! If it's sometimes a bit immature, then maybe that's what I'm like some of the time, but I hope it's not immature all the time.'  "

Most of the ABB lyrics ARE immature, i.e. about Mick's dick, how much worse can it get !