As far as icons of rock go, it's hard to imagine anyone bigger than Mick Jagger.
The Rolling Stones' frontman has been a household name for decades, now, but many people still
know surprisingly little about him.
This is the untold truth of Mick Jagger.
"I'm just gonna do what I do, that's what I do."
"Yeah, alright, well just do it!"
"Alright, then.
Well, that's done and dusty, then, isn't it?
By the way, you look great."
Jagger comes from far more humble beginnings than many of today's rock stars.
His father, Basil Jagger, was a phys-ed teacher, while his mother, Eva, was also a teacher.
He was born in 1943, in the middle of World War 2, making that "crossfire hurricane" line
from "Jumpin' Jack Flash" a reference to the Luftwaffe bombers that were strafing England
at the time.
Of course, this was a time when families didn't have phones or televisions and needed to make
their own entertainment.
Members of the Jagger family would take turns dancing, playing instruments, or, in his case,
doing impressions and song-and-dance routines.
By the time he was 14, he was regularly sneaking out of the house to hang out with local bands.
Jagger told the Irish Independent:
"It was like fun...I could see I got a good reaction."
It all took off from there, but, according to Jagger, his parents weren't exactly happy
when he told them he was giving up his spot at the London School of Economics for a career
in music.
Much later, however, he would also credit his parents with giving him a "centered upbringing"
that kept him from descending fully into the self-destructive behavior that takes the lives
of so many musicians.
He told The Talks:
"When you are young, and you have a sort of close family life and stuff, it helps you
to be centered for later."
attention, but according to Rolling Stone, Jagger is actually pretty strict about holding
on to what little privacy he has managed to maintain.
He hates being interviewed, for example, especially when the subject touches on anything but music.
And when he does sit down with a journalist, interviews only usually last for about 20
minutes.
When the Irish Independent reached out to him ahead of the Stones' 2018 show in Dublin,
they asked him why he didn't make appearances on talk shows.
He simply countered:
"Why do things you don 't need to?"
But there's more to it than that, and Jagger seems cautious of just how important he is
to many people.
He explained:
"People have this obsession.
They want you to be like you were in 1969.
They want you to because otherwise their youth goes with you, you know.
It's very selfish, but it's understandable."
"Image, this image thing is just the, a thing of media.
People have many, many facets of personality, and that includes me."
Jagger hasn't even released a memoir, despite the success enjoyed by Keith Richards' own
memoir, which came out in 2011.
When asked about writing one, Jagger said:
"You don't want to end up like some old footballer in a pub, talking about how he made the cross
in the Cup final in 1964."
It was once the goal of any aspiring British musician to get big in America; hopping across
the pond and scoring a hit in the American charts was a marker of success for practically
every group worth their salt.
This was also true for Mick Jagger and the Stones…but once he got there, he wasn't
impressed by what he found.
When the Stones went on tour in 1964, they hit some of America's biggest cities.
Jagger told Rolling Stone that New York City was "wonderful," and Los Angeles, quote, "was
also kind of interesting."
But he had less kind things to say about the rest of the country.
Jagger explained:
"Outside of that we found it the most repressive society, very prejudiced in every way.
There was still segregation.
And the attitudes were fantastically old-fashioned.
Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness."
When the Irish Independent asked Jagger just what he was thinking when he wrote "Brown
Sugar," the answer wasn't one you would have expected.
Jagger simply said:
"I really don't know.
And I was in Australia when I wrote it.
So you can add that to the top of it, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
So I don't really know what was going through my mind."
Jagger told Rolling Stone that one of the very first songs he ever wrote was "As Tears
Go By," a song famously performed by Marianne Faithfull, which the band have no intentions
of ever recording themselves.
Of course, "Satisfaction" was their biggest hit.
Jagger wrote "Satisfaction" while sitting beside a pool in Tampa, Florida, and has since
told Rolling Stone that most of his best writing is done while he's touring.
He explained:
"It's the best place to write because you're just totally into it.
You get back from a show, have something to eat, get a few beers, and just go to your
room and write.
I used to write about twelve songs in two weeks on tour.
It gives you lots of ideas."
"Welcome to Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp where you'll get to experience the complete rock
n' roll lifestyle, without the lawsuits and STD's."
The Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, California in 1969 was one of the moments that defined
the decade.
It was a free concert announced only days before it actually took place, which quickly
became a perfect storm of poor decision-making: from placing the concert site near to a local
freeway to recruiting the Hells Angels to act as security.
By the time the day was done, four people were dead, including 18-year-old Meredith
Hunter, who died at the hands of the gig's so-called "security".
Nobody could count how many had been injured.
According to a deep-dive into the event written by Rolling Stone magazine, an associate of
the band explained:
"Jagger was very, very shattered.
I cannot overemphasize how depressed and down he was with the way it turned out…When they
knew about the murder, it shook them."
"Sympathy for the Devil" became the song most associated with the chaos of Altamont, and
Jagger later told Rolling Stone that it took a while before he felt he could perform it
again.
While the concert was touted in the media as the end of an era, Jagger has said he didn't
feel that was the case, he simply felt depressed over the fact it had happened at all.
Jagger said:
"That particular burden didn't weigh on my mind.
It was more how awful it was to have had this experience, and how awful it was for someone
to get killed, and how sad it was for his family and how dreadfully the Hells Angels
behaved."
In 2008, the BBC ran a documentary about the FBI.
During the programme, reporters spoke with a former agent named Mark Young, who revealed
that, after the tragedy at Altamont, Mick Jagger found himself the victim of a botched
assassination attempt.
In the wake of the event, Jagger had condemned the actions of the Hells Angels.
Members of the gang vowed to get their revenge and formed a plan to kill him at his holiday
home in the Hamptons.
According to the Telegraph, the Hells Angels had planned to infiltrate his property from
the coast in order to dodge Jagger's security team.
They had hopped on a boat and were heading over to his house when a storm swept through
the area.
Everyone on board was dumped into the ocean, putting a quick end to their attempt on his
life.
Young also added that Jagger had never been told about the planned assassination.
Luckily, law enforcement never got wind of another planned attack.
When asked about his friendship with Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Mick Jagger told
Rolling Stone:
"I can't remember when I didn't know him."
"Wh...that can't...How did...?"
"Sea turtles, mate."
Over the years, these two men have become arguably one of the most legendary duos in
music history.
But it's also no secret that Keith Richards has always had something of a relationship
with hard drugs.
"He's the only man on the planet who can go, 'Anthrax.
Alright.'"
So how have the two kept it together all these years?
While Jagger has said that he doesn't like talking about the drug problems of others,
he has talked a little bit about how Richards' drug use has impacted him.
He said:
"How did I handle it?
Oh, with difficulty.
It's never easy.
I don't find it easy dealing with people with drug problems…If you're really on some heavily
addictive drug, you think about the drug and everything else is secondary.
You try and make everything work, but the drug comes first."
Even when he was at his worst, Jagger says that Richards was still creative, it just
took a long, long time to get anything done.
Jagger explained:
"When Keith was taking heroin, it was very difficult to work…It affected everyone in
certain ways.
But I've never really talked to Keith about this stuff.
So I have no idea what he feels."
"It's not just about living forever, Jackie...The trick is living with yourself forever."
There are the Rolling Stones, and then there's Rolling Stone magazine.
Obviously, you'd expect there to be a relationship between the two, but might not expect it to
be quite as tense as it is.
According to Joe Hagan's biography of Jann Wenner, the magazine's founder, Jagger was
outraged when he first heard of the magazine.
Not only was it a surprise that it had been named after the group, but the original Rolling
Stones weren't even given the honor of appearing on the mag's first cover.
Hagan writes that the offense kicked off a feud that lasted for the next five decades.
The band took action too, hitting Wenner and Rolling Stone with a cease-and-desist letter,
instead of the exclusive interview Wenner had promised new readers.
Tensions continued to run high for years afterwards, even after Jagger and Wenner met and the Stones
finally appeared on the cover.
Bizarrely, at one point Jagger and Wenner actually teamed to launch a British-based
Rolling Stone, which ended up full of politics and misspellings, written by an unruly, drug-fueled
staff.
Wenner was outraged, but by the time he got the magazine under control, Jagger had gotten
bored with the whole thing and headed off to Australia to appear in an art-house movie.
In their 1969 obituary for Stones ex-guitarist Brian Jones, Rolling Stone magazine called
him "an embodiment of the music itself."
It was an apt description for a deeply talented musician.
Jones died at the bottom of a swimming pool after years of drug abuse and scandals, having
become widely known as the band's notorious wild child.
When Jagger spoke with Rolling Stone almost three decades later, he opened up about the
legendary falling-out between Jones and the band.
Jagger said that recording the song "No Expectations" was the last time Jones was, quote, "totally
involved in something that was really worth doing."
The falling out happened gradually, but eventually left Jagger and the band feeling they had
no choice but to fire him, particularly when it got to the point where Jones couldn't even
hold his guitar.
Drug addiction wasn't well understood at the time, however, and Jagger has admitted to
feeling a little guilty over how the issue was handled.
Jagger said:
"...In some ways we picked on him.
But unfortunately, he made himself a target for it; he was very, very jealous, very difficult,
very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people, you get back as
good as you give, to be honest."
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