Mick Jagger with the Herald on Sunday's Rachel Glucina


Mick Jagger, a mysterious brunette and their late-night conversations

23.04.06
Mick Jagger wines, dines and opens up to a young lovely in his hotel room. The thing is, she was working undercover for the Herald on Sunday. Rachel Clucina reports on an enchanting four nights with a rock star.


So Mick Jagger is lying on the couch beside me in his enormous Auckland hotel suite. He's wearing socks - bright yellow, scare-the-horses socks.

"Mork and Mindy yellow," I suggest. He laughs his deep, horsey, sexy laugh. The night before they'd been black with hot pink and green stripes.

"I love loud socks," he'd said then. At that moment, I loved them, too.

I'm stretched out on the couch next to the most famous ladies' man in music, discussing art and Arsenal, the Kiwi cricketers in South Africa, girlfriends and marriage contracts, drugs and Chinese politics. It's surreal, but also bizarrely normal.

"I've got something special for you, Rach," he says, excitedly, dashing off to bring a bottle of Marlborough chardonnay he'd organised for our last night in this suite. Yes, I spent four fabulous nights with the legendary Mick Jagger - but it's not what you think. Sure there was copious amounts of flirting, numerous bottles of French champagne and lots of late-night laughs - but that's as rock'n'roll as it got. Well ... almost.

Was it easy be-friending a Rolling Stone? Not exactly. There was the burly bodyguard in a bulletproof vest I met the night before the band's Auckland gig last Sunday who said he was on the look-out for "prowlers".

"You know," he explained, "paparazzi, journalists and young women who want to meet Mick and get their picture in the paper." Oh God, I panic. I'm all three of those.

We're sitting in the lobby bar of the Langham Hotel, where Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie had arrived two hours earlier. I'll be honest - I was on an official undercover stakeout for the Herald on Sunday. Perhaps I might catch Mick flirting with a pretty girl. Maybe I'd see someone drink too much. Take drugs. It's gossip, not rocket science. There are 385 people in the Rolling Stones entourage and crew - something had to happen.

Just after midnight Mr Jagger makes a low-key entrance into the bar - the others, I later learn, prefer to party privately in their rooms. "They've got wives and family," it's explained.

My girlfriend and I stay to drink Bollinger Reserve with the entourage while Mick is two seats away and, though I never get to speak to him, it's all terribly exciting.

Next day, the bodyguard - Paris Hilton's former protection - calls. Nice to have met me, he says, and would I like a couple of VIP tickets to the concert? We could catch up afterwards. At Western Springs, I get a text wondering if I'm happy with the seats. Happy? I was a personally-invited guest, sitting a handful of rows from the front and I'm partying with the Rolling Stones later. Happy was an understatement.

Back at the hotel bar, post-concert, Jagger's bodyguard whisks me aside and whispers that Jagger would like to come down - would I mind sitting and talking with him? "He likes pretty girls," he winks. Within minutes, guests were turfed off a couch, chairs had been drawn up and I was being beckoned to sit and await His arrival. Beside me is my undercover sidekick, Olivia Hemus, former model, social photographer, a snappy little camera sitting pretty in her bag. We wait.

The wiry man in the disheveled shirt and jersey around his shoulders looks little like the rebellious, arrogant, peacock showman I'd seen earlier on stage. He meanders around the bar then lounges on the couch next to me. And so the fun begins.

Mick Jagger is a talker and the banter never stops. Was the Easter bunny good to him? It was better to his kids, as he'd sent luxurious chocolate eggs all over the world.

"I have seven bloody kids," he laughs. "I could have my own basketball or volleyball team." He brags about his lavish holiday home in the Loire Valley, where he goes to "relax and unwind, though all my friends like to holiday on the Dalmatian coast at the moment". Vacation name-dropping. Bless. I'm impressed.

There's no doubt Jagger loves the company of women - young women particularly. He is an incessant flirt, but charming with it. And there is that Peter Pan complex. He's smitten with our youthful enthusiasm and likes a bit of attitude. Though there is a universe of difference between our lives, he'll compare his various exploits with mine. On my New York travel tales: "Oh yeah, the Chelsea Hotel. I used to visit Dylan when he stayed there but that was before he made his money."

Mick is nothing if not cool but there's still an appealing vulnerability about him. He's theatrical and tactile; he recoils into his thin frame, crossing his outstretched arms across his chest.

He commissions Alexander McQueen and Dior menswear designer Hedi Slimane - master of the thin androgynous look - to make his stage costumes. "I'm getting new ones from Hedi when I get back to Europe," he says. "But I always have to stipulate to him not too thin, I have to be able to move on stage."

He calls the waiter for more champagne. But not for him, he's on water. "Three's my limit and I've guzzled them back already tonight."

And that is just one of the surprises about the debonair but disciplined Mick Jagger.

Over the next few nights, I learn that the man infamous for sex, drugs and Marianne Faithfull never touches cocaine because he can't keep up that lifestyle anymore. He bought champagne for us but won't touch the stuff himself. He hates the bubbles.

His thirst, these days, is for good conversation, a good workout and his own creative work. But that's not to say he doesn't like a laugh. We're sitting side by side on the couch and our thighs are touching.

"Oh my God," I shriek. My thighs are twice the size of his.

He roars with laughter.

He hates going out with people who don't eat. Karl Lagerfeld, he says, never eats.

Despite that tiny frame, I can attest that Mick Jagger eats. Though he spent the next three days in Wellington ("are you coming?" he'd asked - like I was a bonafide groupie. But no, I had to work) his bodyguard rang on Wednesday night to say Jagger would like to go to dinner. We went to Cibo (he makes the booking under the name "James") with Olivia and Victoria, the Welsh woman who runs his LA film production company. The rock star ate quail salad and duck confit - and most of my chocolate dessert.

He drank merlot, sparingly, and water. We talked about, well, tabloid journalism. Jagger's making a film about it and he reckons Rupert Murdoch is worse than George Bush. No accountability, apparently.

Mick knows that I own a marketing company, but he has no idea of my other job - for the Herald on Sunday. Olivia has told him she's studied photography. And, thankfully, he doesn't hate all journalists. Mick prepared for last month's historic tour to China by ringing his old mates to ask what he should know about Chinese censorship.

"I rang Bill Clinton for some advice on what to say to the media," he says. And then he was miffed none of the Western journalists were interested - they just wanted to know what songs he'd had to cut. "I don't care [that the Stones had to cut four songs] - we've got 400 to pick from!"

Mick has flown back to Auckland to film a cameo role in an ABC comedy pilot - the rest of the band, he says, has scattered. "Ronnie's gone to Fiji - he keeps calling himself an Islander," he laughs. He cannot understand why the Americans in the entourage flew straight back to the US. Mick wants to travel - he once ate raw puffin meat in Iceland and is off to Cambodia and Laos with his backpack and Lonely Planet guide for the next two weeks. Daughter Elizabeth, he confides, is holidaying in New Zealand with friends. One of Mick's holiday homes is in Mustique and a rave about the West Indian diet becomes a conversation about Type-2 diabetes and Maori.

Olivia, the undercover photographer, requests a snap. Jagger refuses. He confesses he's been burned recently by a woman he met in a hotel lobby. She wanted a picture with him. He obliged, and found himself front-page news and in a supposed relationship. Olivia begs, saying my mother would love to see it on her birthday next week. Jagger relents, a bit. "Oh sweetheart, let me write your mum a note instead, eh?"

Jagger's paranoia about girls is well founded. There has been the long, long list of lovers and wives and one-night stands but Jagger is still a romantic. He talks about the "beautiful little church in France" where he married first wife Bianca but says, without irony, that people don't always realise the significance of a marriage contract.

"There are two legal contracts - one to your partner and one to the state," he says. Business contracts are more his thing, these days.

On Thursday my phone rings at 11pm. "Hi Rach, it's Mick," he says. (Ohmigod, Mick Jagger just phoned me.) We had planned to go dancing but Mick's tired after filming. Would I like to come over to the suite? "I'm under Mr Cameron."

Tonight he is at his most relaxed. There are those yellow socks (topped by extremely tight grey trousers) and he's jovial, proud he chose wine he thought I'd like and keen to know if I can pick its region. His bags are packed for Friday's flight out, Sade's latest song is on his iPod and he's joking about the differences between his many children.

When Georgia was 9, he tells us, she insisted on going to his local cinema to see the Spice Girls' movie. Jagger didn't want to go but his daughter won. And when she wouldn't carry her soft toy, Spot, he did. "She goes 'oh Dad, I can't be seen walking in with Spot', so I have to walk into the movie carrying a stuffed dog."

He obviously loves his kids, but he doesn't mind poking a bit of fun. Will they reciprocate? "Oh yeah," he says. But his second wife Jerry Hall cops more. The kids aren't always enamoured with what Hall wears, telling her she 'can't go out dressed like that'. Jagger says he tells his former wife she should wear what she wants.

Hall this week told the Daily Mail in Britain that women should stay away from rock stars.

Me, I'm glad I didn't. Sure, Mick didn't know about my other job, writing for this paper. If he had, chances are my four nights would have been barely four minutes. But the subterfuge was necessary to meet the real man, to find out what a famous rock star is really like.

Jagger was simply the most fascinating man I've ever met. He's sexy, intelligent, learned, enormously funny and passionate. He also never laid a sensual hand on me; always the perfect gentleman, even thanking me for the fabulous time together.

It's 2am now and we're tired. Mick hugs and kisses me goodbye and invites me to visit him in Europe this summer. "Ooh, I'd love to," I confess. London and the Loire Valley, I dream. And wouldn't that be the most perfect follow-up story?



ROCKMAN

That's a great story, thanks for posting it.

Too bad she betrayed her new friend who was so nice to her. I hope he finds out. She just made it a little bit harder for a real fan to ever get the chance to potentially hang out with him.

Hmmmm the price of fame........



ROCKMAN

A very good piece of writing.

But unethical. I agree hundred per cent with Cindy.

This spoils my Sunday a little bit. Don't laugh.

Very nice story, but I do agree with Cindy as well.

This kind of stories just make it impossible to a real fan to get close to them!!

I would feel bad for betraying someone else´s confidence like she did.

What a stupid little bitch. What a way to treat someone..

I call BS on this one anyway. Jagger is RARELY seen in the hotel. I doubt he was sitting in the bar. Some or all of this is likely made up. Maybe she spent 4 days with Blondie!

I have to agree with george and bet some of it was totally fabriated but if even part of it is true, I hope, as CINDY said, Mick finds out! I would give my pinkie finger for an experience just like that; none of her 'revelations' are surprising if you know anything at all about Mick. He IS extremely well read, a huge flirt, a gifted conversationalist and knows alot about a million different things, very well-rounded! Oh, to spend just one night talking with him! Hey Mick, ring me up! I promise, I WON'T TELL!

i heard he was seen out in south america, flirting with really young women. if that was true, i can see this too, though i'm surprised it lasted 4 days. i agree with reptile - a stupid bitch. i can't see how the story would be worth the betrayal. i hope she never gets that follow-up story.

She sure deserves criticism. And most of all, there's really not anything new for a Stones fan, typical Mick story. Some journalists write such things about him after one interview and not after four days spent with him. Was it really worth publishing? Well, it's her problem. Probably it was stronger than her, she was eager to let people know she got close to Jagger.
Does she really think she'll have her follow-up story after this? It almost seems she counts on it, but that would be very surprising. I wonder what Mick thinks of her now.

It sounds like nothing sexual happened. She might have left that out or lied about it. But what would his girlfriend think of this if she saw this. He is still together with that tall french chick righ? Anyhow thats gotta be tough if she was upset by Mick inviting a girl into his suite a couple nights in a row until 2.

l'wren and he supposedly have an agreement that their relationship is open. she is aware of his womanizing and accepts it, at least at face, in order to keep him.

L'wren is all talk! She's just pretending to go along with Mick's womanizing because there's not a damn thing she can do about it! Jerry ranted and raved, took up with other men to retaliate, got expensive jewelry as " make-up gifts" and in the end she just quit trying to alter his behavior. This new one thinks that by playing along, she can hold him. About this reporter chickie, I seriously doubt that she spent 4 nights ( or days) with Mick. One night, maybe. He bores easily!

stonestom Wrote:
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> It sounds like nothing sexual happened.

So we know it's BS based on that alone. If she spent 1 night let alone 4, she would be putting out.:>)

Jagger wouldn't spend 30 minutes with her. Did you see her photo?

In many ways, it must be kind of lonely for Mick on the road. He obviously doesn't enjoy being with the other bandmembers (who all have families, and honestly, who among us wants to spend our free time with the guys we work with all day). He loves to talk about art, culture, and all the other things chicks and gay guys like to talk about. But when he finds someone who he thinks shares his interests, he gets screwed like this.

May be Mick new who she was !!!.

** gossip-mistress Rachel Glucina **


You know what they say about imitation and flattery. There can be no greater endorsement of the success of the Sunday Star-Times Auckland-only About Town supplement than the steady evolution towards the same format in the competing Herald on Sunday.

Like About Town, the Herald on Sunday’s Sunday Extra supplement includes lifestyle and travel editorial, but that’s by-the-by. The most significant change, with youthful new gossip-mistress Rachel Glucina at the helm of the Scene pages, is a headlong tilt towards the salacious. The “Guess who, don’t sue” column is a loving tribute to Bridget Saunders’s “We live in a small town” (which originally went under the slightly more threatening name “We know who you are”).

The formula is simple enough: print outrageous gossip about the antics of the wealthy and famous, alluding to the identity of the guilty parties without actually naming names.

Thus, on December 4, “Guess who, don’t sue” had the tale of the pregnant wife of a sportsman “spotted dabbling in recreational drugs in the bathroom of an Auckland nightspot”, the “Parnell girl about town” who returned her breast implants to her husband after their divorce settlement, and the “coquettish telly star” who has been “experimenting with lesbianism” after her marriage break-up.

On the same day, “We live in a small town” had the “married high-flyer of the PR world” masturbating at “the notorious Vodafone party” (an item so hot it appeared twice), a well-known mother offering sexual favours in return for fashion items, a photographer buying “obscene gadgets” online, and a “very straight, very popular, very warm and hugely loved telly type [who] has everything in common with the line-snorting drug-bustees”.

Elsewhere, Saunders had a magazine editor “about to be exposed as having compromised himself with two girls, one of whom was aged 16” and Glucina revealed that a bikini contest winner was “rumoured to have gotten it on with the world’s most famous male porn star, Ron Jeremy”.

There was even more of this stuff, but your correspondent is beginning to feel faint. Where do the scenesters – whose ranks seem disproportionately swelled by telly types – find the energy for all this humping and snorting? Or, given that this is a scene largely created by Saunders’s column (Glucina has adopted her rival’s “A-lister” jargon and her Charlotte-Nicky-Aja star system), is everyone simply trying to live up to the hype?

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that scuttlebutt is selling very well. It’s just a mercy that the whole country doesn’t get to read what Auckland is apparently up to. People might get the wrong idea.

you would think Mick might Google her name after the first night and find out exactly who he's getting involved with. Can someone post a picture of her? I'm dying to see her!

Nicked this from over at Rocksoff...thanks Ten Thousand Motels



Mick Jagger with the Herald on Sunday's Rachel Glucina



ROCKMAN

looks like mick took the picture himself! yeah, he could definitely do better.

CindyC Wrote:
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> That's a great story, thanks for posting it.
>
> Too bad she betrayed her new friend who was so
> nice to her. I hope he finds out. She just
> made it a little bit harder for a real fan to ever
> get the chance to potentially hang out with him.

I don't get everybody (just used CindyC's as an example)...how is this betraying him. She didn't talk about anything super personal. The guys on the road and lonely,needs to talk to someone and finds her good for that. I'm sure he does this all the time. I found it lightly interesting but not back stabbing in anyway what so ever. She had a lot of super nice stuff to say about him...is this popping everyone's fantasy bubbles or what? I don't get it...in the end he's just a guy...

well yeah, i'm sure Mick runs into much much worse behaviour from people on a regular basis.
but even though she is very praiseful and says nothing even remotely embarrassing, if the story's true, she misrepresented herself to the guy
and that i think is what people are finding uncool. who knows what Mick may feel about it, of course ...
as for how she looks in that photo ... well, it's not a great shot of Mick either;
pheromones don't always photograph well. :E


"What do you want - what?!"
- Keith

Now that I've seen her pic, I am pretty sure that all Mick wanted was conversation. I think that "copious amounts of flirting" were all in her mind. She's more Bill Clinton's type.

Let me put it this way, There's no deeper info given then we can find on "Being Mick" - the DVD and it's a lot more civilized than the jerk who put out the isolation tape of the Late Linda McCartney singing totally off key, out of tune on that live HEY JUDE recording years ago. I think Mick gets off looking pretty good...Of course the chick has to go undercover...she was pretty decent IMO....

Damn, how could Mick even want something with an ugly girl like that?

You guys have to get out of fantasy land - this ain't the Stones of 1972 or 1975. His life on the road is much less exciting then everyone thinks...and who's he gonna hang with in NZ? it ain't LA, NYC, Paris, London where all his buddies are.... "LIFE JUST GOES ON GETTING HARDER AND HARDER". Yeah, she's no beauty but either is Mick's new snob....She looks good in SOME pictures...

Hey MB,

My problem is that she did go in the whole thing with the intention to write about it later, and the fact that she did not tell him is simply crappy. When celebrities go into an interview, they go in with the understanding that everything they say or do during that time will or may be written about, therefore they are more guarded.

As she did not tell him, he probably felt he could let his guard down with this person. Although she did not write anything negative, she just as easily could have. I don't give her any credit for that though, she still betrayed his trust.

As for what I think happens on the road, I don't believe it's anywhere near as exciting as it was "back in the day". I don't believe it's just groupies, random sex, drugs or any of that anymore. I actually bet a lot of reading goes on instead, seriously, I don't know about Ronnie, but I believe the rest of them are all big readers. No fantasy land going on in my head.

Sweetheart (CindyC), I wasn't really talking about you. I just used your quote cause it was the best representation of what everybody was basically saying. I agree with you that THESE days ain't like back in the day (Basically the 70's and 80's). The one thing I disagree with you on is this girl COULDN'T tell Jagger she was a reporter or she would have gotten the same HIGHLY guarded Mick interview that everybody else gets - he's a master at it, you know that. The ONLY reporter I know of that was able to get Jagger to open up a bit was that Lisa Robinson but I don't know what happened to her (Jann Wenner too from Rolling Stone mag - that's it). Last time I saw Lisa R. was on Tom Snyder the day after Lennon got shot. I'm just saying for this type of info and story there is no other way to do it but go undercover. And she did but yet was able to keep it very positive and complimentery.Think of what she could have said if she wanted to be a nasty bitch.So many people think it'd be great to be famous, not me. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pool.As someone famous once said, you don't REALLY know what it is until you get there and once you're there and see you don't like it, it's too late to turn around and get out - you're stuck. Think about it, how do you get UNFAMOUS? OJ killed 2 people and they still ask him for his autograph. People used to think it'd be really cool to be JFK jr. Not MB. Cause I knew there were thousands of babes after him that just wanted to sleep with him, get knocked up by him, and then it's LOTTO time. You're walking around with JFK jr.'s kid you got the rest of your financial life MADE IN THE SHADE. What a bitch that must be to go through life like that. Always wondering, always worrying, never REALLY knowing.The one thing I can't figure out about Jagger is how on earth he let that Brazilian Girl get knocked up with his kid on the 98 tour. He knows better. That was one weird "accident". Anyway, you want a story like this it's gotta be undercover.You want the usual Mick pap. Buy Rolling Stone, Q , or Mojo.And CindyC, that's the name of that tune babydoll. Well you heard about the Boston <SLAP> Honey, it's not one of those......

MicksBrain Wrote:
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The one thing I disagree with you on is this girl COULDN'T tell Jagger she was a reporter or she would have gotten the same HIGHLY guarded Mick interview that everybody else gets - he's a master at it, you know that. The ONLY reporter I know of that was able to get Jagger to open up a bit was that Lisa Robinson.


So MB, how does this make what she did any less wrong. If the only way that she could get to the real Mick Jagger is to lie to get her story, then it's wrong. If he is one way with reporters and another way in his personal life, I believe it should be Mick's choice of what he wants the public to see, not this bitch's.

If she wanted to lie to just hang out with him that's one thing, but she could have potentially publicized items he would prefer to keep private. The thing is, if Jagger wanted people to see the real Mick Jagger, he would allow it, as he did with Lisa Robinson. This girl compromised his trust and she's a real douche-bag. I don't know how she can sleep at night.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends - Nietzsche



MB - The was the Google quote of the day, and it somehow seemed fitting to what we are talking about.

And I thought the guy was merely a good arranger and sideman with the Stones and Neil....boy, he can sure come up with a good quote, it appears