Half Century Blues
It is almost 50 years since Mick Jagger drawled his first words into a mic with Keith Richards chugging out guittar riffs beside him. Where did it all go right?
Words | John-Paul Flintoff
Right now, with the world’s most prestigious film festival under way, Jagger is feeling at home. ‘I always come here,’ he says, meaning the festival, which he attends in connection with his other career, that of movie producer.
It began in 2001 with the Second World War code-cracking thriller Enigma, which was helped onto the screen by his production company Jagged Films. But why bother? After all, his fortune is estimated at £150 million. ‘It gives me a different outlet,’ he explains, which may also account for why he’s dabbled for years in acting, having made his screen debut as far back as 1968, playing a debauched rock star in the counterculture classic Performance (released in 1970). ‘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,’ he adds. ‘But you never know how a film is going to turn out. It’s always a leap in the dark.’
It’s not just the movie business that makes Jagger feel relaxed on the Côte d’Azur. Just a few miles up the coast, he once rented a house behind the small town of Antibes, when the Stones left Britain in the early 70s to avoid hefty tax payments. ‘It was a beautiful place we were in,’ he reflects, those gloriously whiny vocal chords of his still very much in tune. ‘Even though we had no money, we managed to rent these great houses. I had a wonderful place with a swimming pool. I enjoyed my time in the South of France, though it got a bit crazy in the end, with too many hangers-on. So then we shut up shop and left.’
By the time they did, the Stones had cut their 1972 blues and soul influenced album Exile On Main Street, the making of which was documented in the recent film Stones In Exile. Of course, everything has a price. As the band jammed, drink and drug excess took its toll – particularly on Jagger’s guitar-hero bandmate Keith Richards. Not that Jagger, now more shrewd businessman than booze and barbiturates-soaked rocker, has any remorse. ‘I don’t regret anything,’ he says. ‘I’m very fond of all of it. You can paint it in a very dark manner, as decadent. It was quite decadent, but then decadence is very enjoyable!’
Never one to wallow in nostalgia, Jagger is swift to debunk the myth that the time in France was all play and no work. ‘We did have a deadline on this record,’ he insists. ‘We were going on tour and, even though it looks very lackadaisical, there was a deadline and we went to Los Angeles and, after that, we went on the road. So that was all planned.’ What followed was a North American tour of epic proportions, thanks in part to Richards’ heroin habit and penchant for chucking television sets from hotel balconies.
Jagger takes issue when I suggest that 1972, with the release of Exile on Main Street and its subsequent tour, was a pivotal year for the band. ‘The bigger turning point was the album before that, the Sticky Fingers album,’ he says. ‘We had a new record company, new management, new financial people… That was more the turning point – 1969 was a very big year for rock ’n’ roll touring. It became more professional at the time. If there was a turning point, it was then, and not 1972.’
If the Stones know anything, it’s just how to tour professionally. Their last, the aptly named A Bigger Bang Tour, was a two-year marathon jaunt around the globe that, after reportedly taking $558 million, has become the highest grossing tour of all time. Next year, they will look to top that, according to media reports, with the beginning of another world tour celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary.
But does Jagger have any idea how they’ve survived this long? ‘Because we were successful,’ he answers. ‘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. Why would we stay together if we weren’t successful? You need those two things – the love of doing it and the love of other people wanting you to do it. It’s a two-way streak.’
While most pensioners are considering a life with their feet up, Jagger still has enough fire in his belly to leap around on stage like a man a third of his age. With his preternaturally skinny physique, he’s certainly built for it – his wiry body coiled with energy. ‘There’s no secret,’ he says on the question of 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.’ The only thing plump about him are those famously thick lips – more pink than bright red, as the Stones’ marketing might have us believe.
Now a near teetotal, who likes nothing more than eight hours sleep a night, 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 of the other side and what shape you’re in, I suppose.’ In his 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 very funny at the time. 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.’
If he sounds a little bitter, it’s doubtless because Jagger has been tainted with so many different personas in the tabloids. He’s been the gangly blues-loving teen, the Crowley-esque dabbler in diabolism (inspired by classic Stones track Sympathy for the Devil) and the sexually promiscuous rock-star (dating everyone from Carla Bruni to Sophie Dahl). But then he’s also the doting father (seven children at last count), the cricket-loving country gent and even a knight of the realm (he’s been Sir Mick since 2003).
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, you wouldn’t be a very welcome guest!’
Blessed with a tap-like ability to turn it off, Jagger has managed to – in the words of that Stones classic track – not fade away. ‘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!” 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’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.’
