BeSPOKE 07

140
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
miCk jAggER WITH HIS WIFE
BiAnCA DURING THEIR
HONEyMOON IN ITALy ©
HULTON-DEUTSCH
COLLECTION/CORBIS.
MICK JAGGER
IN THE RECORDING STUDIO.
miCk jAggER,
SAn REmo itAly.
like “Let’s work” and “I ain’t gonna cry for you if
you’re lazy”. Like all rock stars, Jagger is an opportunist.
He learned early: “At 11, we went squaredancing,
ballroom dancing. It was the first time
you were allowed to legitimately touch girls”. He’s
also competitive. His drive is hinted in casual remarks
about seemingly unimportant passtimes: “I
like hitting a ball really hard in the middle of a tennis
racket - hitting the sweet spot”. When John
Lennon entered his domestic phase, Jagger felt
that Lennon had to be out there, making music -
let the baking of bread to bakers. Everyone can
produce embarrassing photos of their earlier incarnations,
and even Jagger committed a sartorial
faux pas or two. “Stay away from high coloured
shoes”, is, looking back, his main advice. “My children
look at the “Dancing in the Street” video and
go “Wow, look at that shirt, dad!” That video was
done in ten minutes, but I could have done better”.
These days, at a time when his daughter Georgia
May is the muse of Cavalli, even Mick’s children
adopt their father’s style: ‘My daughters Elizabeth
and Georgia May are always nicking all my vintage
seventies’ clothes.’ Keith once described Mick as “a
nice bunch of guys - you can never be sure which
Mick you’re going to meet”. I met Jagger twice,
and what has stayed with me is his intelligence.
Not all rock stars are smart, believe me. Jagger was
astute, well read, witty, friendly but with the laserlike
eyes of someone who’s has seen it all, and who
doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He was a bit guarded,
there was a hint of the siege mentality of someone
who has learned that not everyone in the field of
popular music and media is trustworthy - understandably
so, as the Stones and many others were
ripped off and betrayed by managers, accountants
and hangers-on. He also seemed down to earth,
grounded, aware of his stature and worth, but
clever enough not to buy into his own myth, indeed
very aware that there is a stage version of
him and an everyday version, and the trick is to
switch between one and the other without mixing
them up - which is probably why he is still alive
and kicking. That and the punishing fitness regime
- Jagger is no stranger to the gym, his routine includes
ballet and kickboxing. Meeting him also
made me feel the clicheed division between Jagger
and Richards - Mick as the calculated, businesslike,
power mad control freak (what Keith Richards
calls LVS - Lead Vocalist Syndrome), and Keith as
the real thing, the true rock ’n roll rebel - is a phallacy.
Actually, Mick is the musically more adventurous
one, the one who tries out different musical
styles, the one who forced the Stones to adopt a
more contemporary sound, the one breaking out
of the classic rock ’n roll band set-up. There are stories
of him battling other band members and producers,
telling them “We are not trying to remake
“Exile on Main Street”!”. It was also always Mick who
kept the band together. Even Keith admits that
“For years, Mick looked after me with great sweetness,
never complaining. He ran things, did the
work and marshalled the forces that saved me.
Mick looked after me like a brother”. Jagger was
also the loyal one, demanding to be arrested with
Keith when Boston police wanted to lock him up.
It was Jagger who pleaded for economic restructuring
- it’s easy to paint him as a money grabbing
businessman, but without him, the Stones would
have gone broke long ago. Jagger also never fell
for the false romanticism of rock ’n roll, keeping his
private life private (his solo song ‘Hideaway’ is telling
in that respect) and making sure he always had
a life separate from the band: “A band is not a family,
not a marriage. It’s work. It’s like a gang with its
pecking order and rivalries. It’s not brotherly love.
People always say that, but I have a brother - Chris
Jagger - and my relationship with him is nothing
at all like my relationship with Keith”. And he is
more versatile, balanced and rounded than the
picture the media paint of him, the “former rebel
turned jetsetter” who lives a life of garden parties,
cricket matches and hobnobbing with toffs in Barbados.
In reality he hates ‘flunkies and spongers.’
And he is well read - loves history books and biographies.
In fact, maybe the thing I admire most
about him, given the frankly ludicrously chaotic
mayhem that has surrounded him over the past
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
miCk jAggER WITH BiAnCA
péREz-moRA mACiAS LATER
BiAnCA jAggER.
MICK JAGGER,
MILAN 2007 © SIMONE
CECCHETTI/CORBIS.
yOUNG MICK JAGGER.
LOWER LEFT:
thE Rolling StonES.
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