Mick Jagger Quotes

Some guy said to me: Don't you think you're too old to sing rock n' roll? I said: You'd better check with Mick Jagger.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.

Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger?

The guy thought he was Mick Jagger. I felt bad for him.

Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.

The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.

They want to hold onto something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to - it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it.

Don't you think it's sometimes wise not to grow up.

Life's just a cocktail party - on the street.

Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.

here once was a group with Liam and Niall Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? They lived with Zayn and his room was vile Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Did you know Harry’s such a slob? He needs to win X-factor ‘cause he can’t get a job And oh Louis needs a boat He dresses like he owns one ‘Cause he’s got no other clothes They really need your vote Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Mick Jagger could be Harry’s dad Vas happenin’ mum? Vas happenin’ Mick? When Liam sings he makes his face look sad Vas happenin’ song? Vas happenin’ sad? And Zayn’s the master of echos And Niall was raised by leprechauns So he won’t ever grow And oh Louis needs that boat He dresses like he owns one And it’s becoming a joke They really need your vote Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys? Vas happenin’ boys?

I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.

I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm 45.

Be the Mick Jagger of the mailroom, the Warren Buffet of bookkeeping and the Bono of stapler selling.

I couldn’t strut around like Mick Jagger, or smash my instrument up like Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townshend: bitter subsequent experience has taught me that if you get carried away and try and smash up a piano by pushing it offstage, you end up looking less like a lawless rock god and more like a furniture removal man having a bad day.

...the Beatles were hard men too. Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool, which is like Hamburg or Norfolk, Virginia--a hard, sea-farin' town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the piss out of you if you so much as winked at them. Ringo's from the Dingle, which is like the f***ing Bronx. The Rolling Stones were the mummy's boys--they were all college students from the outskirts of London. They went to starve in London, but it was by choice, to give themselves some sort of aura of disrespectability. I did like the Stones, but they were never anywhere near the Beatles--not for humour, not for originality, not for songs, not for presentation. All they had was Mick Jagger dancing about. Fair enough, the Stones made great records, but they were always s**t on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear.

Mick Jagger once boasted that 'I’d rather be dead than still singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.' But now he’s over sixty and still singing 'Satisfaction'. Some people might find this funny, but not me. When he was young, Mick Jagger couldn’t imagine himself at forty-five. When I was young, I was the same. Can I laugh at Mick Jagger? No way. I just happen not to be a young rock singer. Nobody remembers what stupid things I might have said back then, so they’re not about to quote them back at me. That’s the only difference.

I am not a librarian of my own work. It's a good thing not to be involved with what you have done.

I once asked him why he smoked the world's most expensive cigarette, and he told me it was because he was a man of wealth and taste, at least according to Mick Jagger.

We were ushered into the special reception room that important people go to so they won't have to ensure Customs. It's luxurious and private, and you don't have to mingle with the public. It's the room that you wait in if you are very, very powerful and once got shitfaced with Joseph of Arimathea. Or if you are Mick Jagger.

When I'm 33, I quit.

You can't always get what you want.

You better stop Look around Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes Here comes your nine-teenth nervous breakdown.

You don't expect me to be doing this when I am THIRTY, do you?

Dandelions don't tell no lies...

us not forget Charlie Watts punching Mick Jagger after Jagger called him “my drummer.” “You’re my singer,” Watts snarled, before adjusting his cuffs, and walking away.

Mick's album was called She's the Boss, which said it all. I've never listened to the entire thing all the way through. Who has? It's like Mein Kampf. Everybody had a copy, but nobody listened to it.

The Spice Girl Victoria Beckham has just published the story of her life. I confess that it is not in my reading table.

Paint it black

She imagined herself whirling breathlessly beneath the flashing lights of some impossibly chic Manhattan disco. Suddenly, a hand touches her arm. She turns. ‘Pardon me,’ Mick Jagger says, 'I believe this next dance is mine.

Before John could even get through the first verse, who bursts through the door and jumps right into the fray, lips a'kissin' and hips a'wigglin'? That's right, kids, everbody's favorite zombie hunter. Mick Jagger strode right up to John, raised his arms to the sky, and said, 'O zombie Lennon! It ends here.

At the moment, the Stones were blaring out of the speakers, and Mick Jagger was bemoaning the fact that he didn’t always get what he wanted.

fatal stabbing of a young black spectator while Mick Jagger vainly appealed to the crowd to “cool out” and love one another. Good-bye Sixties; welcome to the future.

Politics doesn’t require talent, intelligence, or good looks. Truly, someone like Donald Rumsfeld, a mediocre government functionary with no discernible talent, intelligence, or charm, is a greater international celebrity than Mick Jagger. Rumsfeld, despite being a has-been, is known in every corner of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for his insanity and arrogance, while Jagger is admired by a mere couple hundred million music enthusiasts, huddled mostly in the First World.

When my phone chimes with a text message on Monday morning, I'm still in that dreamy state between sleep and awake where you can pretty much convince yourself of anything. Like that a teen Mick Jagger is waiting in your driveway to take you to school. Or that your favorite book series ended with an actual satisfying conclusion, instead of what the author tried to pass off as a satisfying conclusion.

Brian knows the affair is wrong. He's known from the moment Wendy first undressed in his office. But with her hot, wet tongue in his ear, and her taut, pink nipples straining against his starched white shirt, and with Mick Jagger's strident voice squawking about satisfaction on the tiny transistor radio, Brian's body refuses to obey. Instead of shoving Wendy out the door, he shoves her onto the unmade bed.

When he was 19, Mick Jagger said, "what a drag it is getting old... (Mother's little Helper)

Soweit ich weiß, hat er von Mick Jagger eine eidesstattliche Erklärung, daß er bei der Session von 'Sympathy for the Devil' anwesend war und im Uhh-uhh-Chor mitgeuhhuhht hat.

Bloom Where You Are Planted" It has been my life's philosophy, or in the words of Mick Jagger, "you can't always get want you want, but you get what you need.

Mick Jagger does it and, well, of course he does—he’s Mick. Phil Collins does it and what an arsehole.

You measure a good song the same way you measure architecture, fashion, or any other artistic endeavor. Time. You know when you see a picture of yourself from the eighties with a horrible hairdo and some stone-washed jeans and you think, “How embarrassing—what the fuck was I thinking? Why didn’t somebody stop me?” It’s the same thing Mick Jagger and David Bowie should be thinking every time they hear their cover of “Dancing in the Streets.” The point is, at the time it seemed like a good idea, just like kitchens with burnt-orange Formica and avocado appliances, den walls covered with fake brick paneling, and segregation—all horrible decisions that we now universally recognize as wrong. But somehow when it comes to music, we can’t just admit we made a mistake with “Emotional Rescue.” There’s always some dick who defends the past. “Hey, man, I lost my virginity to ‘Careless Whisper.’ ” I’m sure there was somebody who got laid for the first time on 9/11 but they don’t get a boner when they see the footage of the planes going into the tower.

Having money will make you look enticing to women even if you are not a good-looking dude. Don’t believe me, go ask Mick Jagger, Donald Trump, Jay-Z and the rest of the fugly men who have all the money and get all the fine women.

Among the many ecstatic notices, Robert Christgau, the self-appointed ‘dean of American rock critics’, put it best, in a review that would still be being quoted when he left the Village Voice twenty-six years later: ‘Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home.

Essa é uma qualidade que algumas pessoas têm. Se você pegar dez caras e colocar numa fila ao lado do Mick Jagger, mesmo alguém que nunca ouviu falar nos Rolling Stones vai apontar para o Jagger e falar: “Aquele ali é um astro do rock”. Billy tinha isso. E a banda fazia um som legal.

Men who love the Stones are fixated on cock. I’m sorry, but that’s the only word. And a firehose is a symbolic fantasy cock. It’s pathetic. Male Stones fans are frozen at eighteen months old, just discovering the thrill of yanking on the rubber band of their own phallus. Female Stones fans are even worse. Mick Jagger has a weird gross mouth that makes him look like a cod, and this turns them on. They’re sexually aroused by fish-men. They’re deviants.” “So what are Beatles fans fixated on? The glory of pussy?” “Exactly. Strawberry Fields is not just a place in Liverpool, Mr. Rookwood.

I did this to myself back then, compared my accomplishments at twenty-three to those of spectacularly successful people (Picasso at twenty-three was finishing his Blue Period; Mick Jagger was writing "19th Nervous Breakdown"; Joan of Arc had rescued France, been burned at the stake, and been dead for four years).

Depending on how you looked at it, Darren was our Mick Jagger (designated swaggering extrovert) to Simon's Keith Richards (quietly virtuosic, blatantly self-destructive). Or else Darren had been Paul McCartney (chirpily commercial) and Simon had been John Lennon (moody, introspective, possessed of quasi-mystical insights).

We were ushered into the special reception room that important people go to so they won’t have to endure Customs. It’s luxurious and private, and you don’t have to mingle with the public. It’s the room that you wait in if you are very, very powerful and once got shitfaced with Joseph of Arimathea. Or if you are Mick Jagger. Naturally,

I won't cry when you say goodbye I'm out of tears, out of tears 

I took a certain pride in knowing I'd helped ruin his life enough to give him something substantial to write about.

The Bone Keeper presides over the festival. She rules the lowest level of the Lowerworld where she keeps watch over the bones. They say she has a skull for a face,wears a skirt made of serpents,and her mouth is extra wide in order to feed off the stars during the day.And yet,despite my numerous journeys to the Lowerworld,I have yet to run into her.But maybe you will, nieta,who knows?" "A skull faec,a snake skirt,and a steady diet of stars?" I shake my head and balk. "No thanks.I'd prefer to avoid her if it's okay with you." "You don't always get the journey you want, nieta. Though you always get the journey you need," she says-yet another sage statement in a collection of many. "You paraphrasing Mick Jagger now?

By then Prefontaine was universally known as Pre, and he was far more than a phenom; he was an outright superstar. He was the biggest thing to hit the world of American track and field since Jesse Owens. Sportswriters frequently compared him to James Dean, and Mick Jagger, and Runner’s World said the most apt comparison might be Muhammad Ali. He was that kind of swaggery, transformative figure.

In case there was any doubt, there is a secret government agency that monitors all the things that normal government agencies vehemently deny any existence and subsequent involvement of. Such as extra-terrestrial life (like Mick Jagger), paranormal activity (like Justin Beiber), and the purely unexplainable (like Big Burger Boys). Regular government agencies have to deny the existence of this secret agency because, essentially, they don’t know that it exists.

Hearing may make shorter intuitive leaps than sight, but it too is subject to illusions. The most pleasant of these are 'mondegreens,' named by the author Sylvia Wright from her youthful mishearing of the Scottish ballad that actually says, 'They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / and they layd him on the green'--not, alas, 'the Lady Mondegreen.' Children, with their relaxed expectations for logic, are a rich source of these (pledging allegiance to 'one Asian in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all'), but everyone has the talent to infer the ridiculous from the inaudible--and, what's more, to believe in it. Here, at least, we do behave like computers, in that our voice-recognition software has little regard for probability but boldly assumes we live in a world of surrealist poets. We are certain that Mick Jagger will never leave our pizza burning and that the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hot cement.

24. The Rutles, “Cheese and Onions” (1978) A legend to last a lunchtime. The Rutles were the perfect Beatle parody, starring Monty Python’s Eric Idle and the Bonzos’ Neil Innes in their classic mock-doc All You Need Is Cash, with scene-stealing turns by George Harrison, Mick Jagger, and Paul Simon. (Interviewer: “Did the Rutles influence you at all?” Simon: “No.” Interviewer: “Did they influence Art Garfunkel?” Simon: “Who?”) “Cheese and Onions” is a psychedelic ersatz Lennon piano ballad so gorgeous, it eventually got bootlegged as a purported Beatle rarity. Innes captures that tone of benignly befuddled pomposity—“I have always thought in the back of my mind / Cheese and onions”—along with the boyish vulnerability that makes it moving. Hell, he even chews gum exactly like John. The Beatles’ psychedelic phase has always been ripe for parody. Witness the 1967 single “The L.S. Bumble Bee,” by the genius Brit comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, from Beyond the Fringe and the BBC series Not Only . . . ​But Also, starring John Lennon in a cameo as a men’s room attendant. “The L.S. Bumble Bee” sounds like the ultimate Pepper parody—“Freak out, baby, the Bee is coming!”—but it came out months before Pepper, as if the comedy team was reeling from Pet Sounds and wondering how the Beatles might respond. Cook and Moore are a secret presence in Pepper—when the audience laughs in the theme song, it’s taken from a live recording of Beyond the Fringe, produced by George Martin.

FACT 4 – There is more to the creation of the Manson Family and their direction than has yet been exposed. There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained. This saga has interlocking links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall knew. The Manson Family and the Hell’s Angels were instruments to turn on enemy forces. They attacked and discredited politically active American youth who had dropped out of the establishment. The violence came down from neo-Nazis, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont. The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the violence. When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, famed musicians associated with a racist, neo-Nazi murder. By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth. Charles Manson made the cover of Life with those wide eyes, like Rasputin. Charles Watson didn’t make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn’t inside the house. Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn’t. He was too busy taking care of matters at the lawyer’s office prior to the killings, or with officials of Young Republicans. Who were Watson’s sponsors in Texas, where he remained until his trial, separate from the Manson Family’s to psychologically distance him from the linking of Watson to the murders he actually committed. “Pigs” was scrawled in Sharon Tate’s house in blood. Was this to make blacks the suspects? Credit cards of the La Bianca family were dropped intentionally in the ghetto after the massacre. The purpose was to stir racial fears and hatred. Who wrote the article, “Did Hate Kill Tate?”—blaming Black Panthers for the murders? Lee Harvey Oswald was passed off as a Marxist. Another deception. A pair of glasses was left on the floor of Sharon Tate’s home the day of the murder. They were never identified. Who moved the bodies after the killers left, before the police arrived? The Spahn ranch wasn’t a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has been incorporated into a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He visited this ranch daily while filming The Outlaw. Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths are displayed in that movie? Why did Mick Jagger insist, “the concert must go on?” There was a demand that filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn’t have happened the same in any other state. The Hell’s Angels had a long working relationship with law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area. They were considered heroes by the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam. The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind sent to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and would be consumed readily by this crowd. Attendees of the concert said there was “a compulsiveness to the event.” It had to take place. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli prohibited him from telling the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (another media event). There were many layers of cover-up, and many names have reappeared in subsequent scripts. Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the US, confessed that his own children told him these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. On November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but crimes of the past had to be exposed to prevent future outrages. How shall we ensure that it will never happen again? It will happen repeatedly unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.

Bloom Where You Are Planted". This has always been my philosophy in life. Or in the words of Mick Jagger, "you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need.

Mick Jagger was never born, just like John Lennon. They were never meant to be.

Most of the radicals took it for granted that their threat of armed revolution was no more serious than Mick Jagger’s dream of being a street-fighting man.

South of Marfa is the road to Big Bend, one of the least visited national parks in the country, and also one of the most glorious. On the way, there is a pleasant resort, Cibolo Creek Ranch, built around several old forts inside the crater of an extinct volcano. Roberta and I once stayed there in the off-season, midsummer, and spent out time chasing hummingbirds and the adorable vermilion flycatcher. In more temperate weather, the ranch has served as a getaway for celebrities, including Mick Jagger, Tommy Lee Jones and Bruce Willis.

I’m real tall when I stand on my charisma. – Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction Writer You can always come back, but you’ve got to come back better. If you come back worse, or even the same, you’re dead. – Phil Spector You get to the point where you have to change everything – change your looks, change your money, change your sex, change your women because of the business. – Mick Jagger We’ve always been fascinated by movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new. – Carl Hiaasen, American Writer Charisma. You can’t buy it. You can’t make it. And you sure can’t fake it. – Unknown. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

Stoned Soup by Stewart Stafford Keith Richards talks Brendan Behan, Making soup, wrapped in a blanket, While in a kitchen in County Cork, Mick Jagger listens and laughs loudly. Discussing the previous night’s gig, Mick says the crowd was wonderful, Keith agrees and says so was Charlie, Keith’s lip cigarette jigs to each word. Through choking plumes of smoke, The soup is ready, Mick tries some, His notable lips curl downwards fast, He humours Keith and says it’s great. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

When rock bands like the Rolling Stones came to prominence in the 1960s, they were perceived as dangerously anti-establishment. Some exploited this reputation by promoting social revolution and sexual hedonism. Even now old rockers in their seventies retain an aura of wildness. Yet Sir Mick Jagger and his ilk changed very little in the society they professed to loathe, and today it is common enough to find our celebrated cultural rebels enjoying multi-millionaire lifestyles based on shrewd investments. They live in large mansions. They enjoy access to the best health care. They take exotic holidays, and so on. We may love the music of Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Bob Geldof, KBE, but now we must see that it really is “only rock and roll.” Such people are part of the kinnocratic illusion (see Chapter 7), manipulating the story of being-like-us, fighting for fairness, making the world a better place with their sonic flares in the gloom.

Soon a number of journalists from the national papers came to interview me to see what all the buzz was about. We developed a foolproof way of impressing them. I sat at my desk, the telephone at my elbow. ‘Great to meet you. Take a seat,’ I would say, waving the journalist down into the beanbag opposite me. As they shuffled around trying to retain their dignity, get comfortable, and remove the drips of houmous and piles of cigarette ash from the folds, the telephone would ring. ‘Can someone take that, please?’ I would ask. ‘Now –’ I turned my attention to the journalist ‘– what do you want to know about Student?’ ‘It’s Ted Heath for you, Richard,’ Tony would call across. ‘I’ll call him back,’ I’d say over my shoulder. ‘Now, what did you want to know about Student?’ By this time the journalist was craning round to watch Tony tell Ted Heath that he was sorry but Richard was in a meeting and he’d call him back. Then the telephone would ring again, and Tony would pick it up. ‘David Bailey for you, Richard.’ ‘I’ll call him back, but will you ask if he can change that lunch date? I’ve got to be in Paris. OK –’ I’d flash an apologetic grin at the journalist ‘– now, how are we doing?’ ‘I just wanted to ask you –’ The telephone rang again. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Tony would apologise, ‘but it’s Mick Jagger for you and he says it’s urgent.’ ‘Please excuse me for a minute,’ I’d say, reluctantly picking up the phone. ‘Mick, hello. Fine thanks, and you? Really? An exclusive? Yes, that sounds great…’ And on I went until Jonny couldn’t stop laughing in the call box opposite or the pips went. ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d say to the journalist. ‘Something’s cropped up and we’ve got to dash. Are we finished?’ The journalist would be ushered out in a daze, passing Jonny on the way, and the telephone would stop ringing.

somos mujeres de veintiún años y Katy Perry hace mucho más por nosotras que Mick Jagger).

So if you like Chico’s clothes, wear Chico’s clothes. If you’ve always shopped at Anthropologie, shop at Anthropologie. We are not MAWs in any other decade but this one, and if Mick Jagger can still be siring offspring into his seventies, I can wear my scuffed cowboy boots well into mine.

When you're on acid being busted it's very odd. It's not fun being busted at all, but being busted on acid is really weird.

Mick required far less hand-holding than Michael. Signing the Stones, though, had required a full frontal assault worthy of General Patton, one of my heroes. The final battle exploded at the Ritz Hotel in Paris back in ’83. After months of relentless pursuit, I had them. All they had to do was sign when suddenly at 3 A.M. Mick goes mental and calls me a “stupid motherfuckin’ record executive.” I lose it. I reach for his throat. I have a vision of punching out all ninety-eight pounds of him. I stop myself, envisioning tomorrow’s headline—“Yetnikoff Kills Jagger.” Jagger relents, signs and from then on it’s wine and roses. It was Mick—wily and witty Mick—who later that year plotted with my girlfriend, the one called Boom Boom, to throw me a surprise fiftieth birthday bash where Henny Youngman emceed and Jon Peters, Barbra

pueden ser chocantes pero eso importa poco. En la cultura de masas la vanidad funciona. Si Mick Jagger fuera humilde, los Stones tocarían en un garaje.

BRIAN JONES: July 1969, London. One of the original members of the Rolling Stones. Unique musician, under control of drugs by 1966, took LSD that caused personality changes and depression. Seemed to have brain damage and disintegrated. Compare his arrests and planted grass to the treatment Lenny Bruce received, forced to drop from the group. Keith Richards said, Some very weird things happened the night Brian died. We had these chauffeurs working for us, and we tried to find out. Some of them had a weird hold over Brian. I got straight into it and wanted to know who was there and couldn’t find out. The only cat I could ask was the one I think who got rid of everybody, and did a whole disappearing thing so that when the cops arrived, it was just an accident. Maybe it was. I don’t know. I don’t even know who was there that night, and finding out is impossible. It’s the same feeling with who killed Kennedy. You can’t get to the bottom of it. – Tony Scaduto, Mick Jagger

Sentía que buscaba en una cueva oscura que era su estómago y daba consigo mismo disminuido, asustado, sin pasado o futuro. Eso sentía. Moriré primero que Mick Jagger, especuló.

I am Mick Jagger. Thirty-five people came.

Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home.

They’re very similar people,” observed Keith Richards. “They’re both very guarded creatures. You wonder if there’s anything worth guarding.

Jim Dickinson: They started running down “Brown Sugar” the first night, but they didn’t get a take. I watched Mick write the lyrics. It took him maybe forty-five minutes; it was disgusting. He wrote it down as fast as he could move his hand. I’d never seen anything like it. He had one of those yellow legal pads, and he’d write a verse a page, just write a verse and then turn the page, and when he had three pages filled, they started to cut it. It was amazing! If you listen to the lyrics, he says, “Skydog slaver” (though it’s always written “scarred old slaver”). What does that mean? Skydog is what they called Duane Allman in Muscle Shoals, because he was high all the time. And Jagger heard somebody say it and he thought it was a cool word so he used it. He was writing about literally being in the South. It was amazing to watch him do it. The same thing happened with “Wild Horses.” Keith had “Wild Horses” written as a lullaby. It was about Marlon, about not wanting to leave home because he’d just had a son.

This happens on the road a lot. Very fierce relationships form and then they’re gone; it’s almost a flash. “I was really close to her, I really liked her, I almost remember her name.” It’s not like I was collecting—I’m not Bill Wyman or Mick Jagger, noting down how many I’ve had. I’m not talking about shagging here. I’ve never been able to go to bed with a woman just for sex. I’ve no interest in that. I want to hug you and kiss you and make you feel good and protect you. And get a nice note the next day, stay in touch. I’d rather jerk off than just have a piece of pussy. I’ve never paid for it in my life. I’ve been paid for it, though. Sometimes there’s a backhander—“I love you too, and here’s some smack!” Sometimes I’d get into it just for fun.

This situation was a culmination of things that had been going on for several years. The immediate problem was that Mick had developed an overriding desire to control everything. As far as he was concerned, it was Mick Jagger and them. That was the attitude that we all got. It didn’t matter how much he tried, he couldn’t stop appearing, to himself at least, as numero uno. Now there was Mick’s world, which was a socialite world, and our world. This didn’t work at all well with keeping a band together or keeping them happy. Oh dear me, after all these years, the swollen head’s arrived. He’d gotten to where it wouldn’t fit through the doorway. The band, including myself, were now basically hirelings. That had always been his attitude to everyone else, but never to the band. When it dripped over onto us, that was

I loved the guy, I loved to work with him, but he was very shy and very distant. I’d get close to him when we were working out stuff and playing, and when he let his hair down he was extremely funny. But I always found it very difficult to find any more than the Mick Taylor I’d met the first time. You can see it on the screen in Gimme Shelter—his face has no animation. He was fighting himself somewhere inside. There’s not a lot you can do about that, with guys like that; you can’t bring them out. They’ve got to fight their own demons. You’d bring him out for an hour or two, for an evening or a night, but the next day he was brooding again. Not a barrel of laughs, let’s put it like that. Well, you give certain people their space. You realize, some guys you can spend a day with them and basically you’ve learned all you’re ever going to know about them. Like Mick Jagger in exact reverse.

But I have the feeling that Mick thought that I belonged to him. And I didn’t feel like that at all. It’s taken me years to even think about that idea. Because I love the man dearly; I’m still his mate. But he makes it very difficult to be his friend. Most guys I know are assholes, I have some great asshole friends, but that’s not the point. Friendship has got nothing to do with that. It’s can you hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you? Friendship is a diminishing of distance between people. That’s what friendship is, and to me it’s one of the most important things in the world. Mick doesn’t like to trust anybody. I’ll trust you until you prove you’re not trustworthy. And maybe that’s the major difference between us. I can’t really think of any other way to put it. I think it’s something to do with just being Mick Jagger, and the way he’s had to deal with being Mick Jagger. He can’t stop being Mick Jagger all the time. Maybe it’s his mother in him.

Mick had become uncertain, had started second-guessing his own talent—that seemed, ironically, to be at the root of the self-inflation. For many years through the ’60s, Mick was incredibly charming and humorous. He was natural. It was electrifying the way he could work those small spaces, as a singer and as a dancer; fascinating to watch and work with—the spins, the moves. He never thought about it. That performance was exciting without him appearing to do anything. And he’s still good, even though to my mind it’s dissipated on the big stages. That’s what people have wanted to see: spectacle. But it’s not necessarily what he’s best at. Somewhere, though, he got unnatural. He forgot how good he was in that small spot. He forgot his natural rhythm. I know he disagrees with me. What somebody else was doing was far more interesting to him than what he was doing. He even began to act as if he wanted to be someone else. Mick is quite competitive, and he started to get competitive about other bands. He watched what David Bowie was doing and wanted to do it. Bowie was a major, major attraction. Somebody had taken Mick on in the costume and bizarreness department. But the fact is, Mick could deliver ten times more than Bowie in just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, singing “I’m a Man.” Why would you want to be anything else if you’re Mick Jagger? Is being the greatest entertainer in show business not enough? He forgot that it was he who was new, who created and set the trends in the first place, for years. It’s fascinating. I can’t figure it out. It’s almost as if Mick was aspiring to be Mick Jagger, chasing his own phantom. And getting design consultants to help him do it. No one taught him to dance, until he took dance lessons. Charlie and Ronnie and I quite often chuckle when we see Mick out there doing a move that we know some dance instructor just laid on him, instead of being himself. We know the minute he’s going plastic. Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years; we know when the moneymaker’s shaking and when it’s being told what to do. Mick’s taken up singing lessons, but that may be to preserve his voice.

He’s caught up with people his own age, rock-star types, he talks about Mick Jagger and other old farts reverentially.

You don’t want to walk and talk about Jesus, You just want to see his face. —Keith Richards / Mick Jagger (1972)

I was the 1st to realize being a one women guy is the only way to go & Jagger was the last

William and Kate escaped to Villa Hibiscus on the exclusive island enclave of Mustique in the Grenadines. Mustique had royal connections going back to the 1950s, when the high-living Princess Margaret built a lavish villa there. Mick Jagger bought a place on Mustique in 1971 and was soon joined by the likes of David Bowie and Richard Branson. Two other island residents—fashion moguls John and Belle Robinson, founders of the Jigsaw clothing chain—graciously waved the customary $14,000 weekly rental fee and lent Villa Hibiscus, their estate overlooking Macaroni Beach, to the young cadet and his girlfriend. The

Well, as my old nanny used to say, we can´t always get what we want." I pause. "It was either her or Mick Jagger.

Only, you know what?​ For Gramps and Grandma, who were about the nicest people you could imagine, who certainly had no interest in the Devil or any of his works, not even Mick Jagger, progressive was a code word.​ A sort of dog-whistle.​ What they really were was Communists.

PETE TOWNSHEND WROTE a lengthy essay, “A Discourse on Mick Jagger’s Fortieth Birthday,” and sent us a picture of himself holding a lit candle with “Happy Birthday Mick” written across his chest.

I’d rather die than be 45 and still singing ‘Satisfaction.

Steve Strange: I ran a very tight ship in terms of my door policy. I wanted creative-minded pioneers there who looked like a walking piece of art, not some drunken, beery lads. The best move I made was turning Mick Jagger away at the door. He was wearing trainers.

To enter the Blitz, you had to negotiate your way past Strange on the door; he once correctly turned away the ridiculous Mick Jagger for arriving dressed in a baseball cap and trainers. You also had to look different, extravagantly different, which meant dressing up, wearing make-up and experimenting with gender roles (and that was just the boys). Those bands that were inspired by the Blitz crowd were later packaged and promoted as New Romantics or futurists, but there was nothing calculating about the early pioneers of the scene: they were sincerely, uninhibitedly weird.

Mi pequeña conclusión: el problema es la crisis general de valores, el «todo vale» con tal de publicar y vender. Peor aún, «todo vale» con tal de disfrutar de un breve día de gloria o recibir cien 'likes' en Facebook. Hay idiotas en este oficio que tienen como modelo a Mick Jagger en lugar de a Manu Leguineche. Así nos va.

But when I asked if she was behind 'You Can't Always Get What You Want,' she said, 'Absolutely. That's my song. Every time I hear it, I'm right back with Mick in the flat. Music can't tell time.

On a scale of 1-10 how do ya rate the Stones in Concert . . . 12 !! . . . but in New York City . . . 15

only two individuals in the world whose mere announced arrival guaranteed pandemonium on the streets: the Pope and Mick Jagger.

Spiderwoman stepped forward and said, "Oh, do give us a hint, just give us a glimmer." Mick turned to me and said, "We're the Glimmer Twins." Baptized on the equator, the Glimmer Twins is the name we used later for ourselves as producers of our own records.

We know the minute he's going plastic. Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years; we know when the moneymaker's shaking and when it's being told what to do.

Unless the South Beach techno-dance clubs outbid them. They don’t have live bands, just DJs up in a booth. And the DJs are now celebrities like Mick Jagger, with their own dance-mix followers who make pilgrimages club to club to hear them turn on the music. When did a stereo become a musical instrument?” Serge leaned forward and clicked on the car radio. “There, I’m an artist. Thousands of women on ecstasy now want to have three-ways with me.

Look who’s talking, Mick Jagger.” “Jagger? The dude weighs a hundred pounds and struts around like a peacock. We have absolutely nothing in common.” “Not true. You’re both geriatric and you both have egos big enough to fill a stadium.” They were both genuinely laughing as they entered Les Brassins—filling the role of happy lovers on holiday in Brussels without looking like they were trying.