Comments

Last update: 23/02/12

Postscript: 08/06/21

It’s almost impossible to consider drawing Mick in a conventional pose. His public image is synonymous with the leering “in your face” stance beloved by so many second rate impersonators. Just recently I acquired the “Jumpin Jack Flash” promo video in glorious colour (I wiped the b & W alternative), and from the moment Jagger utters the immortal line “I was baaaaawn in a crossfire hurricaine” one cannot help but smile, for Mick is without doubt one of the world’s great showmen; in fact there’s an arguable case to be made for him being the greatest of them all.

He’s a song stylist because it’s evident that he’s not really a singer although I must confess to a sneaking regard for his lower range tones – deep, rich and rather engaging, used sparingly but always to tasteful effect. No let’s be honest Mick has never attempted “standards” because he can’t; put simply he doesn’t have that type of voice. However he is unique and it is that very quality that has sustained the Stones on and off for the 50 years they’ve been around as a performing unit. I love them; always have done. Their harmonies are invariably ragged, their approach to recording near “ramshackle” and yet they can rightfully claim their pole position as the world’s greatest rock & roll band. In fact it is that precise distinction between rock’ & ’roll and music in general that avoids any direct comparison with The Beatles. The Stones benefited from the high tech era of live performing whilst the technology to support their huge stadium tours was seemingly invented the day after The Beatles retired permanently from life on the road. In contrast, The Beatles aura as a live amphetamine fuelled powerhouse unit is recalled only by those lucky enough to have seen them in Hamburg; extant recordings being inconclusive and dating from a period when the band was moving onto greater things. Those interviewees concerned are in no doubt that as live performers the Fabs would have acquitted themselves well in comparison with the Stones whilst within the context of ‘vinyl production’ even the most ardent r & b aficionado would probably concede that The Beatles defined the possibilities of the recording studio as an audio workshop more than any other artist.

So why do I like them? Well, firstly their uniform lack of good looks. The probability of not boasting at least one heartthrob amongst a group of five men was unlikely, yet it gave the Stones a unique homogeneity from which Andrew Oldham was able to cultivate their “anti-establishment” image. Brian Jones looked absolutely wasted -my contemporaries and I won’t even boast comparable eye bags in our seventies – and the Stones founding member was dead at 27!. Bill Wyman could have been plucked from a “stone age” movie and lied about his birth date, Mick was the original Angelina Jolie minus the sultry looks, Charlie – bless him – looked more like a draughtsmen commuting everyday by train, and Keith could have been a “Beatle” but chose a life of elegant wastefulness that presently supports his image as a ”walking miracle.” I laugh constantly with them and if they’ve singularly failed to generate a great album since 1978’s “Some Girls”, there’s still always something to get your head around on every Stones release.

As for Mick Jagger the man – seven children by four women perhaps says most of what can be said. He’s socially aspirational and in accepting a knighthood made a predictable gesture even though, unlike other similarly feted rock musicians, he has no known record of charitable work or public services. Keith Richards might be on record as saying that he does not wish to take the stage with someone wearing a “coronet and sporting the old ermine” but at the heart of it all is the wider issue of accepting an award from the very same establishment that had sought to incarcerate them 36 years earlier. I’m with Keith on this one – I never forget. How on earth can anyone allow the passage of time to dilute the memory of people that have attempted to destroy you?

Becoming Sir Mick may have driven a wedge between the Glimmer Twins but where Mick really let his financial mask slip was the unsuccessful attempt to invalidate his marriage to Jerry Hall despite the resultant bastardisation of his children that would have legally ensued. In addition, there was the question of a one year postponement in 1998 of a series of UK concerts with valid ticket sales honoured for a further twelve months. I will return to his second marriage in a while but let us first revisit the 1998 tour cancellation.

Labour was imposing full taxes on foreign-earned income of any British resident who worked in the UK at all during the tax year and the 200 strong entourage, roadies, security staff etc would have indirectly cost the Stones 40% of the tour’s total earnings. Previously, under 1977 legislation, British people who lived and worked abroad for more than a year were exempted from British taxes on their earnings if they spent 62 days or less on UK soil. Blair’s Government shifted the goalposts; hence the one year delay strategy. Since US ticket prices on the 1999 tour were as high as $300 a seat the interest earning possibilities for Stones monies on deposit were presumably highlighted to Jagger by his advisers.

Officially The Stones were concerned about their staff. Of course, the true ‘ins and outs’ of the Labour Government’s FED (foreign earnings Deduction”) legislation as it affected the band were never made clear. What is known is that patient fans wading through turnstiles a year later were not awarded interest payments on their monies; evidently another victory for the ‘power of stardom.’ Would anyone normally purchase an item and be prepared to wait twelve months for delivery?

As for the “marriage that never was”, Jerry Hall was awarded circa £12.5m and this classy mother probably deserved every penny. She believed her marriage was valid under Balinese law whilst Jagger maintained they both knew otherwise. Well it’s a “rare bird” that stays with any man for an appreciable period of time without marriage and that’s lesson number one for the male ‘handbook of life’. In any event, the case confirmed a petitioner spouse’s right to a financial settlement if the couple ‘appeared’ to be married. What on earth was Jagger thinking? She’s talented, intelligent, tolerant beyond the call of duty (Mick fathered another child with a multi lingual broadcaster in 1999), discrete and had raised a family of four with him. Just how much money does anyone really need? *

*More than £190m it would seem – (the latest 2010 estimate). On a more intimate ‘male level’ we can factor in the shabby treatment of guitarist Ronnie Wood (a mere hired hand on retainer fees for thirty years before Keith fought and secured equal partnership status for his mate), and the near obsessive stranglehold on the Stones songwriting empire, (Bill Wyman might have written the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” riff on the piano but he only ever received performance royalties). In contrast, Lennon and McCartney gave Starr a one third share in royalties for “What Goes on” and he only contributed a few lyrical changes. Perhaps we should expect little else from a London School of Economics student but his parsimonious nature casts a pall on his public image. As for his first wife, Bianca, she has completely re-defined herself in the public’s eye as a Social and Human rights advocate of considerable note. Perhaps there’s something to be said for fleeing the “Jagger bubble.”

On a positive note, Mick, from all sources, takes parenting seriously, and showed suitable love and deference in making a one day return journey to Britain from Las Vegas whilst on tour to be with his dying father. However, I am not aware of truly “close friends” in Jagger’s world and indeed Keith described him as “unbearable” in his 2010 autobiography “Life”.

Is there a case for the defence? Arguably yes in certain quarters. Here’s the background story to Mick’s bogus response to Keith’s autobiography, which the writer Sean Egan regrettably interpreted as being genuine whilst preparing his excellent literary compendium, ‘The Mammoth book of The Rolling Stones’ (2013). Nevertheless, irrespective of whether these are Mick’s own words, they reflect many of the sentiments he may genuinely feel about sustaining the Stones’s empire throughout Richards\‘s comatose years.

http://www.examiner.com/article/slate-com-s-mick-jagger-response-to-keith-richards-memoir-is-a-joke\

\http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/11/please_allow_me_to_correct_a_few_things.single.html\

Postscript :

In early 2018, Keith Richards would take a shot at his bandmate Mick Jagger in a Wall Street Journal profile. The 74-year-old rock icon said, “Mick’s a randy old bastard. It’s time for the snip – you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!”

Jagger, 73 at the time, had made headlines the previous December becoming a father for the eighth time with his 30-year-old girlfriend Melanie Hamrick giving birth to their son, Deveraux. After the comment had gone viral Richards regrettably took to Twitter to apologize for suggesting his bandmate get a long overdue vasectomy: “I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line. I have of course apologized to him in person.”

Public knowledge of the relationship with Hamrick was front page headlines only a fortnight after the tragic suicide of his long term girlfriend, the former model and famed fashion designer L’Wren Scott. Jagger had reportedly made the acquaintance of Hamrick months before Scott took her life. Don’t rush to judge, but one would have expected Mick to have kept a sufficiently low enough profile to avoid speculation. Scott’s family were appalled.

My apologies for the amount of links included here but frankly I cannot write much more about Jagger. In comparison to Richards, he cuts such a pathetic figure these days. The old adage “It’s only Mick being Mick,” has a very hollow ring to it now; the merest hint of envy in millions of men about Mick and his ladies now having long given way to sheer ridicule. If there comes a pivotal moment when a man must ‘reign himself in’ to avoid looking pathetic, no such epiphany has clearly ever been bestowed upon Jagger and don’t hold your breath over the Stones’s front man ever being challenged on this point during interviews.

https://nypost.com/2014/03/17/mick-jaggers-model-girlfriend-lwren-scott-commits-suicide/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10900908/Mick-Jaggers-mystery-woman-is-27-year-old-ballet-dancer.html

http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2018/05/25/secrets-to-mick-jaggers-everlasting-health-and-energy/

I wouldn’t imagine anyone taking issue with a septuagenarian pursuing a rigorous exercise regime, but might I be bold enough to suggest that were Jagger to devote more of his down-time to song-writing rather than yoga and ballet, The Stones might not find themselves now more than four decades distanced from their last great album?