Quote
Stoneswolf
New jagger interview in German newspaper Die Zeit:
From: DIE ZEIT, No.15, 7th April 2022, Feuilleton, page 57:
»I would so love to go dancing again«Mick Jagger has been on stage with his band for 60 years, and this summer the Rolling Stones are touring Europe once again. In the interview he talks about new songs, arguments with Paul McCartney and the death of his friend Charlie WattsDIE ZEIT: Mr Jagger, you have just released the song
Strange Game together with the British film composer Daniel Pemberton. Your voice sounds amazingly fresh, almost youthful, even by Mick Jagger standards.
Mick Jagger: Thank you very much! The song is a bit different from the stuff I usually do. Someone said it sounded like Kurt Vile.
ZEIT: A younger American Indie songwriter. Do you agree with the assessment of the song?
Jagger: Yes. I think it's because
Strange Game is so casually arranged and orchestrated. When we started it, there was no real composition. Daniel sent me a rudimentary instrumental to which I sang a few lines on my iPhone. I sent them to him, and that way we finished the song pretty quickly. In the end, I just went into the studio and sang it.
Strange Game is actually a Shuffle, but still not a classic Blues. The song has something grungy.
ZEIT: There's also something grungy about Jackson Lamb - the character Gary Oldman plays in the new Apple-TV-series
Slow Horses.
Strange Game is the theme song of this agent series: Jackson Lamb is a washed-up old-school British secret service agent. Now he's trying to find his way in the new age - with manners that take some getting used to.
Jagger: He is hopelessly old-fashioned and politically incorrect, the pastiche of a classic agent character. You never quite find out what led to him being punitively reassigned in the series, so to speak, but you suspect: it was something really, really bad. It was easy for me to empathise with this world because I had read the novels by Mick Herron on which the series is based.
ZEIT: The world of people like Jackson Lamb seemed to have ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now there is a war going on in the middle of Europe as we speak. How scared are you by the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine?
Jagger: It is insanely scary. This war could escalate at any time without further ado, that scares me tremendously.
ZEIT:
"I was born in a crossfire hurricane" : Jumpin' Jack Flash, one of the Rolling Stones' most famous songs, begins with this line. A reference to the fact that Keith Richards and you were born in Dartford in 1943, while the town was repeatedly the target of German air raids. The peace movement later emerged from your generation.
Jagger: It's hard for my generation to understand. Our parents used to talk about the war constantly at the dinner table, that was the dominant theme of my childhood and youth. As a result, we were indirectly but lastingly shaped by the two world wars. Against this background, I would not have thought it possible that something like this could happen again in my lifetime. Through our parents, we have been taught all our lives what suffering wars cause. Now we have one right on our own doorstep. At the moment, of course, it is above all a total horror for the people in Ukraine, and that gets you down.
ZEIT: War seemed to be a relic of times past, was the West too naive in this respect?
Jagger: It seems puzzling to me what the purpose of this war is in the first place. I really don't see how it benefits anyone. Obviously it's not benefiting Ukraine, but it's not benefiting Russia either, so what exactly is Putin getting out of this war? No one is getting anything out of it. Like most wars, this one is completely pointless.
ZEIT: You are not necessarily considered a particularly nostalgic person ...
Jagger: You can't necessarily say that, that's true.
ZEIT: You use Twitter and Instagram, you generally seem to cope better with change than other people. Against this background, can you understand that some of your lyrics, such as Brown Sugar, are judged differently today than when they were written? A controversy has recently flared up around the song, with some reading it as misogynistic or even racist. You then decided not to play Brown Sugar any more until further notice.
Jagger: I wouldn't necessarily say that was as big a deal as you make it sound now. I imagine a controversy differently.
ZEIT: It was and is an issue for many. Can you find understanding for the criticism?
Jagger: Some things change from generation to generation, that's the way things are. And of course that also applies to people's attitudes to certain topics. This song is fifty years old, that's a hell of a long time. I'm open to these changes, some I like, some I don't, but I accept them and fully embrace them. I live in the here and now, not in some parallel universe where the sixties never stopped.
ZEIT: Paul McCartney mentioned a few weeks ago that he had apologised to the Rolling Stones after allegedly calling the band a Blues-Cover-Band in an interview with the
New Yorker. The quote was taken out of context, McCartney said. Does it actually amuse you that the supposed rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones is still good for headlines in 2022?
Jagger: I love it! I was on tour at the time, so it came at just the right time. A welcome template: Paul did me the favour of giving me material for some whimsical stage announcements through this interview, which I could work with wonderfully. A lot of fun.
ZEIT: You have been extremely active throughout your life and are known as a restless spirit. How much did the silence of the pandemic affect you?
Jagger: Fortunately, I spend a lot of time in the countryside these days anyway, so it was quite bearable. I've been making a lot of music, writing songs, listening to records. I stayed in Europe most of the time. It was completely different from usual, of course, but not uninteresting. The fact that I can't go out is hard for me, it still is. I would so much like to go dancing again. But I still hold back a lot. Under no circumstances do I want to risk the upcoming tour by going to a club without thinking.
ZEIT: Earlier you told us how you worked with Daniel Pemberton on
Strange Game via the internet. Would this way of working also be conceivable with the Rolling Stones, or is it essential for the band to get together physically?
Jagger: Not necessarily. Nowadays you can organise a lot of things over the internet, that's also true for the Stones. Daniel and I were in different countries when we did the song, it's kind of a permanent thing with the Stones. Of course it's always nicer to meet in person, but I can also work via Zoom and discuss details like timings, lengths and moods.
ZEIT: Keith Richards seems to have a different opinion. He told me some time ago that the biggest problem with the Stones was always getting all the members in the same room at the same time. But that was the prerequisite for the creation of new music.
Jagger: Of course, it's always better for a band to get together in the studio. But as a singer I'm used to working on my vocals alone anyway, it's always been that way. You definitely don't want to have a bunch of people around you while you're recording the vocals for an album, you need silence and concentration. It's no different with Keith by the way, he records his guitar overdubs and vocals on his own as well. But of course, for the basics it's good and important to come together as a band.
ZEIT: For five or six years there has been talk of a new Stones album in interviews and social media posts. It hasn't been released yet.
Jagger: It's not because of the way we work. It hasn't been that easy for us lately. We had written a lot of songs and recorded some really nice stuff. Then Charlie [Charlie Watts, the drummer of the Rolling Stones,
editor's note ] died ... There are some good recordings that he's still on, but none of them are really finished. Now Keith and I recently had a writing session in which we had some good ideas. But until all these approaches have really become an album, we still have a lot of work ahead of us.
ZEIT: Traumatic deaths have accompanied the Rolling Stones' career from a very early point. Former companions like guitarist Brian Jones died young. Charlie Watts had reached a certain age, does that somehow make this loss more bearable for you?
Jagger: Of course it's a difference if you die at 27 or at 80. Nevertheless, his death was a huge shock. At first it seemed he was just ill and couldn't tour. We all really assumed that he would recover quickly, but that didn't happen. I was totally shocked and basically still am.
ZEIT: The remaining Stones seemed to be immortal. Many fans have been with the band for so long that the death of Charlie Watts felt like the loss of a family member to them.
Jagger: He certainly was for us. A close family member ... He was just there from the beginning. Even longer: I was already playing with Charlie in London clubs before the Rolling Stones even existed. So he was one of my oldest musician friends. We were also very good friends in our private lives and had many common interests. We often went to the Cricket together, just enjoyed spending time together and took care of things together like the designs of our stage set-ups.
ZEIT: Charlie Watts was a trained graphic designer.
Jagger: That's right. I did a lot of our artwork and designs with him. It's a tremendous loss.
ZEIT: Some people couldn't understand that you nevertheless announced that you would continue with the Rolling Stones without Charlie Watts. Was there a moment when you thought: Okay, that's it, the Stones are history?
Jagger: Well, that could well have happened. If we hadn't had a booked tour coming up, which had already been postponed for a year because of the pandemic, I couldn't have said what would have happened. But it was already clear before Charlie's death that we would play this tour without him. We wouldn't have done it if he hadn't asked us to. But Charlie said, "Please play this tour without me, I'm afraid I can't come." So we did it.
ZEIT: Even for someone who is not susceptible to nostalgia, sixty must be a huge number. That's how many years it's been since you first stood on stage with the Rolling Stones. You are now celebrating this anniversary with the upcoming European tour.
Jagger: Indeed, that is an unimaginable number. It sounds like a very long time to spend in one and the same band, which, to top it all off, I'm still playing in. But that's what I do, I'm still in that band, there's no denying that. But you know what? Not only have I accepted it, but I enjoy it and revel in it. Let's see where it takes us.
ZEIT: At least your favourite question is perhaps beginning to make more sense after all this time. I have to ask it, of course: How much longer can you do the Stones job?
Jagger: Oh my God. When I was first asked that question, I was only 33 years old. Honestly, I had no idea then and I still don't know now. Obviously not forever. But as long as one enjoys it and is still able to do it, we just keep doing it. So you see: the answer has always remained the same.
ZEIT: Is there actually a question that surprises you that no journalist has ever asked you in all these years?
Jagger: Absolutely not, no. I've really been asked everything you can imagine, literally everything.
(Interview by Torsten Groß) - [
www.Zeit.de], [
en.iKiosk.de] - (paywalled). Re-translation of the text done by DeepL.com .
See also the interview with Keith Richards by the German News-Magazine
Der Spiegel, 12-Mar-2022 - [
iorr.org] .