Loosely translated from "The 'heavy' adventure of Mick Jagger" in Spain's El Pais:

About singing in Sanskrit - "As a young man I was interested in Indian music because it was linked to drugs. It made you go into a trance state.
Now I travel to India a few times a year. I'm sorry I didn't learn to sing in the traditional Hindu way, because it's a good parlor trick."

He hasn't read 'Life', and declines further comment - 'If I start to talk about that subject, I don't have enough hours in the day."

The SuperHeavy experience was reinvigorating, since they had "nothing to lose".

A tour remains unlikely, as everyone "has their own things to do."

Frank W. Ockenfels

The project started with you and Dave Stewart. Why did you decide to bring in Joss, Damian and A.R.?

We were looking to do a record that didn't sound like anything we'd heard before, and we thought we'd do this musical mixture of people that would harmonize together yet bring things from musical places that we knew about and might have even dabbled in, people that specialize in different things and would bring different voices. Joss brings the female voice, obviously, and the English soul thing. We've worked with her before, so we knew her capabilities and that she was very easy to work with, and we knew we wanted to bring in another voice like A.R., who's a very sweet guy, super musical, but added a completely different dimension. The same with Damian.

So, [it was] people coming from different musical places but able to subsume their egos for a while and throw everything into the mix and hope something's gonna come out [laughs] because we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if we would get songs. We wanted to make songs; we weren't interested in jams.

What was the songwriting process like with SuperHeavy compared to the Stones?

Well, songwriting is songwriting, you know what I mean? You can come at it from all different points of view. With the Stones, we do lots of different ways of songwriting. You've got the sort of "hope for the best" songwriting, where you turn up and you've got nothing, and you've got like writing everything completely demoed and then laying it on people, so I'm used to writing in very, very different ways.

I've written a lot of songs with Dave, so I knew that part of it. We purposely didn't write a lot of stuff first to sort of say, "OK, this is how this is gonna go." We wanted people to contribute, we wanted people to write, so we didn't have a lot prepared, which is always sort of worrying, because you may get nothing. But very quickly, on the first day, we got like six things. They weren't all finished, but they were very good ideas, and some of them were sort of finished songs, so we got this real good buzz, where you went from having absolutely nothing one minute and then you've got almost a finished record 15 minutes later. We missed out all these intervening periods of soul-examining lyric writing and demos and "do you like this?" and "should this be faster?" to almost a finished record with the voices on it, with A.R. singing in Hindi and Joss singing harmonies to me and a rap in the middle. So, your idea, or the germ of your idea, was very quickly realized, and that's a very exciting thing, because just writing songs where you've got nothing one minute and then suddenly you've got a song, melody and a lyric is great.

How was it for you not being the sole frontman?

Well, it's a lot easier for me, to be honest [laughs]. That's one of the things Dave sold me on in the beginning. He said, "You know, it won't be so hard for you, because you won't have to do everything all the time," and I said, "Yeah, right." But of course, you're present the whole time. When I wasn't singing I was playing the guitar, and when I wasn't playing the guitar, I was playing harmonica, and when I wasn't doing any of that, I was producing, and when wasn't doing that, I was making the tea.

But you know, I'm not singing all the time, so what I have to do is work out what harmonies I'm going to do and when Joss is going to sing. "OK, it's your turn, sing this, and now we sing the chorus." It's quite easy to do that with Joss, and yeah, it's fun not having to do the whole thing, but you can't abdicate responsibility. You have to be there.

The song 'Never Gonna Change' really stood out as a Stones-like ballad. How did that come about?

Dave starts playing this chord sequence, and I had two lines that I had written the night before as I was going to bed. I was seeing this image in my mind of this girl with very white skin painting her face, and I just wrote it in my book. Dave started playing this descending chord sequence, and I started singing these lines, and we made the song up on the spur of the moment. We did it in like two takes. That sort of things is fun, so I'm glad you liked that one.

In terms of age and success, you're the elder statesman of the group. Did it seem that way, or did the personalities all balance out?

I didn't really feel that, to be honest. The youngest person in the room is Joss, who's a serious soul music student, so it's not like a person I have to explain references to, explain who Aretha Franklin is. She knows it all. If you're working sometimes with very young people, they don't know anything like that, and you do have to explain references, but with Joss, she's not in that tradition. She's completely different, and she's the youngest person in the room. The rest of them, it's not really a generational thing. A.R. had never played in a band since he was at high school, so he found it I think slightly more difficult than anybody, joining in rather than only playing stuff that he created, but he soon quickly got on to it. Damian understands all my ancient reggae references. If I'd refer back to a Jamaican record of the early '70s when his father was even doing ska he would still know what that was.

So now that the record is coming out, have you discussed taking it on tour?

Yeah, we talked about doing some special shows for it. I don't think it's a band you'd want to go out on a 100-city tour with and do theaters, and everyone's very busy and got their own careers, so I think we'd be up for something if it seemed to fit.

What do you have planned with the Stones right now?

I just finished off doing all the outtakes for the 'Some Girls' album we're releasing at Thanksgiving. We did 'Exile,' we did a lot of different takes, a lot of different cuts that hadn't come out before, so we're doing the similar kind of thing with 'Some Girls,' so I've just been doing them because a lot of them weren't complete, so I had to complete them, and then we're gonna mix those and put them out for Thanksgiving. Then we talked about maybe what events are going to be going around for the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones. We don't really know the answer to that, but we talked about it a bit.

Does it blow your mind that the anniversary is coming up?

It sounds a lot of years to me. But you know, you're very lucky to have been doing it that long, so I guess I should be happy [laughs].

SuperHeavy: AR Rahman, Mick Jagger, Damian Marley, Joss Stone and Dave Stewart

Rolling Stone Sir Mick Jagger introduces his "chaotic" new supergroup and explains why the Rolling Stones won't be playing at the Olympics.

SuperHeavy is a band that shouldn't work.

Sir Mick Jagger's latest side project is a genre-splicing supergroup, starring Damian Marley, Joss Stone and Slumdog Millionaire composer AR Rahman.

Musically, it flits between rock, reggae, soul, bhangra and blues - with all four vocalists competing for space across 12 eclectic tracks.

Yet the record is oddly compelling, its musical flights of fancy grounded by the supple, rootsy rhythms of Marley's backing band.

"It was chaotic," admits Jagger of the recording sessions, "but it was also a lot of fun".

"Everyone had to subsume their egos to some point. There wasn't really someone who was 'the boss.'"

Jagger cooked up the idea for SuperHeavy with Eurythmics producer Dave Stewart, who convened the band for a fortnight of breakneck recording sessions in Los Angeles in 2009.

"This wasn't a project where you put a band in the studio and you take as long as you want," Jagger says.

"Everyone was busy, so we set the parameter so on the first 10 days, to see how much we could do."

Those sessions produced nearly 40 hours of music, often in the form of extended jams, which were gradually whittled down to form coherent songs.

"If you can play something for 35 minutes, you've got to be enjoying it," Jagger points out.



As someone who has chiefly written alone or in partnership with Keith Richards for nearly 50 years, the collaborative process was something of a revelation for the strutting Stones frontman.

By way of illustration, he describes the creation of a song called One Day, One Night.

"AR Rahman set up this really simple groove," he says, "and on top of that I started playing two minor chords on the guitar."

"I drifted into the lyrical idea of this guy being drunk in a hotel room, and he'd obviously had a row with his girlfriend.

"Dave said: 'Why doesn't this guy wander across the street where Joss is singing?'

"So I had to write a bit where I go outside, and we changed the key from a minor key to a major key. Joss is singing in that major key, and I go on stage to join her.

"That was a very different way of writing a song. I'd never really done that before."

In the end, the album contains just one track where Jagger is credited as the sole author.

I Can't Take It No More is a brutally straightforward rock song with a caustic lyric.

"All you scurvy politicians," the 68-year-old spits, "crying endless contrition. It really gets my goat, it sticks in my throat."

It's angry ("angry-ish," Jagger corrects) but he denies that the song was directed at anyone in particular.

"It's just general. It is so apparent that politicians' promises are usually broken.

"They expect us to believe they're going to provide a panacea, but they're always entrapped by the problems they inherit. They find themselves the prisoners of practicalities and realities."

It's a sympathetic reading of the political system for someone who is more readily associated with the revolutionary counter-culture of the 1960s.

This is, after all, the man who wrote Street Fighting Man in response to rioters who almost toppled Charles De Gaulle's government in France in 1968.

But Jagger has often said the single was not supposed to be a call to arms for "sleepy London town".

"I never believed that the violent course was necessary for our society," he told one interviewer in 1987.

"For other societies, perhaps, but in ours it's totally unnecessary."

Asked about this summer's riots in the UK, Jagger's response is measured and dryly analytical.

"There's a long history of rioting in England and it seems to be that it goes in cycles," he says.

"We had the poll tax riots, the race riots, the Toxteth riots.

"This summer was described as the 'consumer riots' but, you know, in the race riots in the US 1960, there was always looting as well. It's always a by-product.

"Whether this all portends a complete breakdown in society, as David Cameron portrayed it, I don't know.

"Of course it exposes problems that have to be faced. But whether these problems are insuperable or not is a matter of conjecture."



Jagger proves easier to pin down on musical matters - specifically whether the Rolling Stones will play at the 2012 Olympics.

"Has anyone actually approached us? No," he says.

"But Bryan Adams said: 'Whatever you do, don't do any Olympic openings,' after he did the winter Games in Canada.

"It was so cold, and he had to wear this bizarre suit... Although that's not going to happen here - it would just rain."

The star adds that he was unimpressed with the UK's contribution to the closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics.

"It wasn't a brilliant piece of theatre when they left the stadium with a London bus with Jimmy Page on it," he laughs.

"I don't want to be on that bus when it arrives in London…"

SuperHeavy is released on Monday, 19 September on Polydor Records. The single, Miracle Worker, is out now.

Mick guests on "Simon Mayo Drivetime" today on BBC Radio 2.

Program airs 5 - 7pm London time.

For those that missed the Simon Mayo interview - or those that want to hear it again - show's archived for a week @ BBC Radio 2.

Mick was relaxed, witty and engaging. Really good stuff.

Some Mick quotes from an interview in Italy's l'Unità:

This is a game for you ...

"No, it's serious, but fun. See, there's nothing to lose, this isn't a project for life. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't work. I don't know how long it will last, that depends on how people accept it. I won't be upset if they don't like it. But I had fun doing new things, like singing in Sanskrit, or trying to imitate Marley in doing "toasting". My favorite piece is "I Don't Mind", a very sweet song and very English in mood, despite the reggae rhythm. It's like "As Tears Go By".

The stated purpose of SuperHeavy is to go beyond the known genres. Could you explain?

"It's good that people start thinking outside of categories. Music has always been categorized into what I call "cages for birds," not a new problem to be honest.  I-tunes is a great deal of cages... Here's an example. You get an email from the Grammy organization: If you want your record to be eligible, complete this document within the next week, checking the genre box of the album. The thing with the Grammys is that they expect you to indicate the category they want or you're out."

Do you listen to a lot of music?

"Yes, what's out there. There are times I'll listen to more "easy" things and other times I'll throw on classical music. Then I'll go to hard rock, then I'll want to know everything about new releases, and I'll dive back into great blues rock. "  

Why haven't you written an autobiography? After the great success of Richards it's your turn...

"Well, I think it's self-destructive to stir up the past. I consider it dangerous for your psyche, especially if it was a difficult past. In short, if you had a hard life, looking back on it is destabilizing. Or you could think 'Oh well, I had an easy life...' "

Did you like Keith's?

"I haven't read it! Have you? Did you like it? I don't know...I think it's a dramatic thing to relive."

There are hopes for a fiftieth anniversary tour with the band?

"That's a topic I don't want to discuss."

If the album's a great success will there be a tour?

"Oh no! I can imagine individual performances, festivals. Each of us is very busy."

After 50 years with the Rolling Stones has the SuperHeavy project made you feel younger?

"No! (Laughs). It's a fun project, but not a band for the rest of my life."