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Topic: A man of wealth and taste Return to archive
11th March 2006 09:00 PM
Ten Thousand Motels A man of wealth and taste
March 12, 2006
The Age

His punishing schedule would defeat men half his age. Yet at 62, the Rolling Stones' knight of the realm will admit to no aches or pains. Except when Nigel Farndale asks about his love life.

He's a restless man, Mick Jagger. Having risen from his sofa to check for texts on his mobile, he sits bonelessly back down, tucks his legs underneath him, ploughs his hands up through his thick, glossy hair then rises once more, this time to offer me a glass for my miniature bottle of Perrier - "We are very civilised here," he says in that distinctively slurring, camply over-enunciated voice. "Very, very civilised."

"Here" is a Toronto high school that the Rolling Stones have commandeered for rehearsals. They are about to begin a year-long world tour, and the band members are arriving for an evening's practice. Jagger's children are also assembling, across town. I'm not sure which ones - he has seven, by four different mothers - but this may account for his air of distraction.

"They'll be touching down any minute," he says. "I expect they will turn up looking rather sleepy. They love being on tour with me. Always moving. Never bored."

The same cannot be said for Jagger himself. It is easy enough to engage him with small talk about cricket. He is a member of the venerable Marylebone Cricket Club and follows world cricket religiously on his laptop - "That Glenn McGrath, what a bastard."

But when we turn to his own story, his eyes flit impatiently and his body goes limp with tedium. And when I ask those questions a conscientious interviewer ought to ask - about his notorious womanising, his reputation for miserliness, his alleged snobbery - he makes the face of a man asked to fill out a long insurance form.

This is to come. For now, though, I am struck by how tired he seems. As well he might. After all, he may be a rock star, and a grand bohemian, but he is also a 62-year-old grandfather. I tell him I feel exhausted just reading his schedule. "Me too," he says with a grin. "I do this thing where I have to decide where we move, from A to B to C, looking at flight times, and I was so tired after doing it for an hour I had to have a lie down."

When I note that his stage performance - all that strutting, shimmying, flapping - has been compared to running a half-marathon every night, he corrects: "I think it's closer to playing five sets of tennis." Does he, though, have the normal aches and pains a 62-year-old might be expected to have in the morning?

"No, I don't ache anywhere. But on tour you do have little injuries. Inevitably. And I do feel tired, even on my days off. Travelling is tiring, even if the way we travel is luxurious (this is said in a northern accent, for comic effect). It is luxury, but it is relentless luxury. It is tiring having to meet people all the time and be nice to them."

It is hard to say whether, close up, Jagger looks his age. Those famous lips are not as rubbery as they once were, and their improbable contours are now framed by pleats of skin, deep laughter lines and corrugations. But he has clear eyes, and an athletic, if wiry, frame, which exaggerates the size of his head.

Clearly he has great respect for his own health - he has a personal trainer, wears earplugs on stage, tries to get a full eight hours' sleep a night. Is this, I ask, a legacy from his father (a 93-year-old retired PE teacher)? "Yeah, he totally drilled it into me to look after myself from a very early age. He brainwashed me. I'm an assiduous trainer and I've been training since 1970, so it's nothing new."

Is it fear of stopping that motivates him to go on touring; fear that he will suddenly feel old if he stops?

"There is something to be said for working to keep yourself going. I'm not a workaholic, but when you are in this business you have to work hard. It's not a gentle plod."

I tell him I recently watched a documentary about Hitler and was struck by the way he controlled a crowd. There were similarities with the way Jagger does it: staring at people, jutting out the chin, theatrically waving his arms to mesmerise.

"Hopefully, my crowd is more benign," he says. "I've seen the Hitler footage and it's all about repetition and cajoling, getting the crowd to believe these things, none of which is particularly pleasant - you know, sacrifice for the greater good of the German Volk. Hitler was obviously a brilliant crowd manipulator, but he wasn't asking them to enjoy themselves very much, as far as I can see. All I want is for the crowd to have fun. As the singer, I guess I'm the catalyst for that, the point of empathy. You lead the audience, you cajole and praise and give them the songs they want. It's pleasurable, but it's also quite scary. Your body is running a lot of chemicals. Dopamine. Adrenaline."

Recalling pictures of Jagger from the '70s, wearing clinging trousers and looking like he was (cough) pleased to see the crowd, I ask if performance is sexual. "It's not really sexual, no. Exhilarating. It's more like the kind of buzz that you might get from sprinting."

It is thought that since 1989 the Stones tours have grossed $A2.8 billion. Is that the motivation? "A tour does generate a lot of money, it's true. But would I do it for no money? Yes, I probably would."

When not touring, Jagger divides his time between his houses in London, New York, the Loire Valley and Mustique. He is estimated to be worth $A423 million but this is little more than guesswork. Does he even know how much he is worth?

"Not down to the last penny but, broadly speaking, yes. People like to know how much they are worth. I mean, they make out they don't know, because they are artists who are above all that stuff. But I think they always know."

Jagger was still a student at the London School of Economics when the Rolling Stones had their first taste of fame in the early '60s. This may partly explain his formidable business acumen. But what about his reputation for parsimony? Jagger's chauffeur recalled how Jagger once complained about the cost of hay-fever pills in Britain - he waited to go to the US to buy them instead.

"I'm not at all stingy," Jagger counters when I ask about this. "I don't know what that reputation is all about, really. On the other hand, no one likes to pay more for things than they are worth. My early childhood memories are of rationing and so I am frugal, and I do look down on people who waste things. I always turn the lights out. None of my American friends turn anything off. TVs run all night."

Some critics suggest that the Stones have become a parody of their former dangerous selves - and Jagger, especially, has become a pantomime dame. This change in image was well illustrated by a recent front-page story in a broadsheet newspaper. It showed a picture of Jagger and Marianne Faithfull emerging from court in 1969, after facing drugs charges. I hand a copy of the paper to him.

"Yeah, I did read that, online," he says. "Marianne in white tights." He reads the headline in an aristocratic voice: "WHEN A KNIGHT OF THE REALM WAS THE DREGS OF SOCIETY. Actually, when you read the piece, it doesn't say the police thought I was the dregs of society, it says some of the people they interviewed in my case were the dregs."

Did he have to do much soul-searching before accepting his knighthood in 2004? "No. It was a nice thing to be offered and I don't think it would have been good manners to decline it. I tried not to make a fuss about it. That would have been naff. No one calls me Sir Mick. I never ask them to and I don't have it on my letter headings, unlike some people. It annoys me when people do that. Certain famous actors."

Keith Richards went berserk. "I thought it was ludicrous of Mick to take one of those gongs from the establishment," he said, "when they did their best to throw us in jail. It's a f---ing paltry honour. If he's into that shit, he should hang on for the peerage." Jagger laughs when I quote this to him: "Just 'cause he didn't get it himself. Pretty obvious, really."

I also quote something Faithfull said, that Jagger is "a tremendous snob who always craved a knighthood". "I never heard her say that about me," he says. "But I know she'd love to be a dame, more than anything else. But she's not really dame material."

We have moved on to the subject of Jagger's women. Three in particular bestride the decades: Marianne in the '60s, Bianca in the '70s and Jerry in the '80s and '90s. When I observe that they all capitalised well on the fame they found through him, he says, "Yeah, they made a good fist of it, one way and another".

I ask about the groupie years, presuming he can't remember much about them. "I can remember everything," he says carefully. "But I'm not going to talk about them."

Bill Wyman claimed he slept with 2000 women during his time with the Stones. Does Jagger know how many he slept with? "Noooo, we don't talk about things like that. That's News of the World." He rolls his eyes, folds his arms, stares at me.

A less vulgar question, then. How many times has he been in love?

"Oh don't. Don't go there with the love question."

The longest love affair, or relationship at least, has been with Keith Richards, has it not? "Well, one can have old friends," he says. "It's nice to have old friends. Keith is certainly the oldest friend."

They first met in the sandpit at their primary school in Kent. Charlie Watts said recently, "You can't come between them. You hit an invisible wall. They don't want anyone else in there. They are like brothers, always arguing but always getting on." Richards, meanwhile, has said, "I have a feeling that I'm not supposed to have any friend except him. He doesn't have many close male friends apart from me, and he keeps me at a distance. Mick is very difficult to reach."

When I throw these quotes open to discussion, Jagger sighs. "First of all, Keith is not my brother. I have my own brother who I'm very close to. Keith's like a friend and songwriting partner. He sees things differently because he's an only child. Also, he's an inward person, whereas I'm gregarious."

Faithfull described him as "a hollow, voracious entity that constantly needed to replenish itself with things, people, ideas". How does he see himself? Single-minded? "Yes, but without being ruthless, that word you used earlier. I have great attention to detail, without being excessive. I like to control, but I also like to delegate. I'm not given to melancholy. I have down moments, but I don't give in to them."

Is he contemplative? "Not enough. I'm not a brooder." He does keep a diary, he says, and when I note that Bill Wyman always claimed he was "the Stones' diarist", Jagger laughs scornfully and does another impersonation: "Dear diary, went out and bought a packet of fags. Came home."

His children, he says, are his chief pleasure in life. "I speak to them most days. They keep me on my toes. They broaden my interests, just as I broaden theirs."

I ask what values that he, as a paragon of rebelliousness, is able to instil in them. "I don't think they take any of that in at all. Children see you as a parent first and someone famous afterwards. I'm always telling them the codes I live by and the things society expects. But they are nowhere near as rude and rebellious as I was. As a parent I'm probably not strict enough with them. Then again, Gabriel is always saying, 'There are sooo many rules'. And I say, 'There just are so many rules, and here's another one'."

Jagger jumps up from the sofa. "Now, let me check my messages." He reads one out: "Kids just left airport. 17.30." He turns to me. "Are we nearly finished?"

Before I can answer, he adds, "I think so."


[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
11th March 2006 09:31 PM
Soldatti Good article, thanks for posting it.
12th March 2006 12:32 AM
jb Toronto...............................................why now?
12th March 2006 09:00 AM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
jb wrote:
Toronto...............................................why now?



Good question....I was wondering the same thing myself. I had never seen it before anyway. That "AGE" is an Aussie publication so maybe that's the timing with the Stones going down-under. I haven't a clue if this interview was published somewhere else previously or not. At any rate just a little more fodder for our obsession.
12th March 2006 09:38 AM
mrhipfl The article had a melancholy feel. I think the way it was written made it seem like Mick was a lot more tired than he really is.
12th March 2006 11:32 AM
Ihavelotsajam
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:


Good question....I was wondering the same thing myself. I had never seen it before anyway. That "AGE" is an Aussie publication so maybe that's the timing with the Stones going down-under. I haven't a clue if this interview was published somewhere else previously or not. At any rate just a little more fodder for our obsession.


It was published before-- I just forget where. I remember reading it around September.
12th March 2006 11:47 AM
Ten Thousand Motels OK. It doesn't do any harm to read the same interview twice...if necessary. I mean it takes alot to get bored with The stones. I mean it does happen but rarely.
12th March 2006 11:51 AM
Ten Thousand Motels "There are sooo many rules". Gabriel Jagger

Sounds to me like he doesn't like them either. Poor kid...he ain't old enough to tell his old man to go fuck himself yet. But he seems to be thinking about it. Which is a good sign.
12th March 2006 12:22 PM
Ihavelotsajam
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
OK. It doesn't do any harm to read the same interview twice...if necessary. I mean it takes alot to get bored with The stones. I mean it does happen but rarely.



Nope, it most certainly doesn't. I just can't remember where it was printed before.
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