The one and only Mick Jagger. Literally. Who else is there? His A list contemporaries are either dead or resting, or they were simply never quite as sexy and charismatic as the Stones frontman. Jim Morrison has gone, so has Jimi Hendrix. Paul McCartney was never quite as beguiling as a performer. Dylan can’t dance – if he can, it’s a well guarded secret.
Jagger’s predatory charm, his animal magnetism and general stage presence are unique. Even his buddy, kindred spirit and nemesis Keith Richards, at the height of their animosity (what Keith called “World War III”), allowed for the fact that “Nobody else on this planet can work a room like Mick can. When he pours it on, it still amazes me”. His body language is feline, ever so slightly camp at times, but always mesmerizing. Jagger is obviously and purposely a style icon, a rock aristocrat, an aesthete, although he finds such honorary titles reductive: “A German journalist wanted to talk only about style, as if I were some kind of Duke of Windsor figure. I appreciate beauty, but I’m not a clothes horse”.
Nevertheless, Jagger’s sartorial incarnations have entered fashion history: the Shellyan frocks, the Byronesque suits, the louche peacock look of “Performance”, the faux bohemian attire in Saint-Tropez, the flamboyant Ossie Clark jumpsuits, the redingote riding coats, the decadent sport jock stadium look of the early eighties, the Studio 54 disco look, the Savile Row suits (although bespoke suits were always more Charlie Watts’s bag), the cosmopolitan jet set look…
Jagger’s fashion sense has been markedly broader than that of, say, Bryan – Tuxedo – Ferry. And these days he has his stage clothes made by his girlfriend L’Wren Scott.
The best thing about clothes, he says, is “I’m skinny, so I can wear anything that emphasizes my silhouette, I don’t have to worry about whether my clothes adequately cover up any fat bits.
L’Wren says the big thing is the stage gear has to be ‘stretchy, heavily constructed yet light-weight, and never tight or scratchy, as he has to move around in it”. For almost five decades now, Jagger has epithomised rock ‘n roll cool. From his diaries, we learn that Cecil Beaton, a style icon of the previous generation of Bright Young Things, was fascinated by Mick’s charisma and his “marve- lous torso”.
Soon, there was to be a changing of the guard. There have been many sidelines in Jag- ger’s life, from fashion and documentaries to film- producing and acting and elegant philandering, but music has always come first. Contrary to the popular myth of the ever stoned Stones or the loungeing rockstar, the prolific Jagger has a strong work ethic, echoes of which can be found in lyrics beSpoke 139 like “Let’s work” and “I ain’t gonna cry for you if you’re lazy”. Like all rock stars, Jagger is an opportunist.
He learned early: “At 11, we went square-dancing, ballroom dancing. It was the first time you were allowed to legitimately touch girls”. He’s also competitive. His drive is hinted in casual remarks about seemingly unimportant passtimes: “I like hitting a ball really hard in the middle of a tennis racket hitting the sweet spot”. When John Lennon entered his domestic phase, Jagger felt that Lennon had to be out there, making music – let the baking of bread to bakers. Everyone can produce embarrassing photos of their earlier incarnations, and even Jagger committed a sartorial faux pas or two.
“Stay away from high coloured shoes”, is, looking back, his main advice. “My children look at the “Dancing in the Street” video and go “Wow, look at that shirt, dad!” That video was done in ten minutes, but I could have done better”. These days, at a time when his daughter Georgia May is the muse of Cavalli, even Mick’s children adopt their father’s style: ‘My daughters Elizabeth and Georgia May are always nicking all my vintage seventies’ clothes.
Keith once described Mick as “a nice bunch of guys – you can never be sure which Mick you’re going to meet”. I met Jagger twice, and what has stayed with me is his intelligence. Not all rock stars are smart, believe me. Jagger was astute, well read, witty, friendly but with the laser-like eyes of someone who’s has seen it all, and who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He was a bit guarded, there was a hint of the siege mentality of someone who has learned that not everyone in the field of popular music and media is trustworthy – understandably so, as the Stones and many others were ripped off and betrayed by managers, accountants and hangers-on.
He also seemed down to earth, grounded, aware of his stature and worth, but clever enough not to buy into his own myth, in- deed very aware that there is a stage version of him and an everyday version, and the trick is to switch between one and the other without mixing them up which is probably why he is still alive and kicking.
That and the punishing fitness regime Jagger is no stranger to the gym, his routine includes ballet and kickboxing. Meeting him also made me feel the clicheed division between Jagger and Richards – Mick as the calculated, business-like, power mad control freak (what Keith Richards calls LVS – Lead Vocalist Syndrome), and Keith as the real thing, the true rock ‘n roll rebel – is a phallacy.
Actually, Mick is the musically more adventurous- ous one, the one who tries out different musical styles, the one who forced the Stones to adopt a more contemporary sound, the one breaking out of the classic rock ‘n roll band set-up. There are stories of him battling other band members and producers, telling them “We are not trying to remake “Exile on Main Street”!”.
It was also always Mick who kept the band together. Even Keith admits that “For years, Mick looked after me with great sweetness, never complaining. He ran things, did the work and marshalled the forces that saved me. Mick looked after me like a brother”. Jagger was also the loyal one, demanding to be arrested with Keith when Boston police wanted to lock him up. It was Jagger who pleaded for economic restructuring – it’s easy to paint him as a money grabbing businessman, but without him, the Stones would have gone broke long ago.
Jagger also never fell for the false romanticism of rock ‘n roll, keeping his private life private (his solo song ‘Hideaway’ is telling in that respect) and making sure he always had a life separate from the band: “A band is not a fam- ily, not a marriage. It’s work. It’s like a gang with its pecking order and rivalries. It’s not brotherly love. People always say that, but I have a brother – Chris Jagger – and my relationship with him is nothing at all like my relationship with Keith”.
And he is more versatile, balanced and rounded than the picture the media paint of him, the “former rebel turned jetsetter” who lives a life of garden parties, cricket matches and hobnobbing with toffs in Bar- bados. In reality he hates ‘flunkies and spongers.’ And he is well read – loves history books and biographies. In fact, maybe the thing I admire most about him, given the frankly ludicrously chaotic mayhem that has surrounded him over the past half century, is how sane he has remained.
That includes his healthy suspicion of drugs. He has indulged, but was never an addict, deeming cocaine “a daft, debilitating habit-forming bore, and bad for the voice” and heroin “quite destructive and devious”. Recently, on the David Letterman show, Mick joked “You start playing rock ‘n roll so you can have sex and do drugs, but you end up doing drugs so you can still play rock ‘n roll and have sex”. The rumour that he has a metal plate in his nose he dismisses as “rubbish”. As far back as the late seventies, journalists asked Jagger “Will the Stones ever tour again?”
Since then, there have been a dozen world tours, and although the Stones aren’t yet in the Dylanesque Neverending Tour league, it looks as the recent concerts in Hyde Park were anything but a farewell. During a concert, I heard Keith say “This is better than dying, huh?”. Quite. Frank Sinatra said there’s a lot to be said for longevity. Jagger said, dryly “Well, there’s two options really: either you’re dead or you’re longevity”.
But Mick isn’t one to dwell on the past. “I don’t look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today. It’s ridiculous: while you’re around, in great shape, with no chance of extinction, everyone’s ready to kick you and say “Why don’t you break up, you’ve outstayed your welcome””. And when it seems you’re ready to retire, they go “But it’s the Stones, man, you should go on forever!”
People seem to demand of me that I keep their youthful memories intact in a glass case specifically reserved for them and damn the sacrifices I have to make.
They have this conservative picture of us and don’t want us to change. But I don’t want to live in the past just for their petty satisfaction.
I still make music “cause it’s fun and challenging. And I love the warmth of an audience, rolling towards me in waves”.
Jagger was always fiercely competitive – keeping one eye on the competition – what was David Bowie doing, or Prince, or Michael Jackson, or whoever seemed a fitting sparring partner at the time.
So, this year we find Jagger the elder, the peer, the survivor, the legend, the icon, blessed with an undiminished lust for life. Peter Pan Jagger the unstoppable.
We’re lucky to have him. To quote Mr Zimmerman: may he stay forever young.
