Mick Jagger Knows He May Have Played His Last Rolling Stones Show

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0:30Mick Jagger:Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

0:40From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. Mick Jagger truly needs no introduction. He's the legendary frontman of the Rolling Stones, who are releasing a new album called Foreign Tongues. I've been a fan of the Stones since 1994, when I saw them on their Voodoo Lounge tour. It was my first ever rock concert, and it left a huge impression. Since then, I've listened to just about every song the band has released, from undeniable classics like My Favorite, You Can't Always Get What You Want, to more obscure tracks like Sway. And I've always wondered, what's Mick Jagger really like?

1:22Here's my conversation with Mick Jagger.

1:31Mick. Hi, David. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. That's all right. I have a bunch of questions about the new album. Okay. But I'd like to start with a question that comes from a place of pure personal curiosity. Okay. So one of my all-time favorite of your songs is Sway from Sticky Fingers. And I always wondered about the first line of that song, okay, the lyrics, which are, Did you ever wake up to find a day that broke up your mind? mind destroyed your notions of circular time i have not have you no so there's a question do you remember where that line came from no i just made it up at the moment i was what we were waiting for keith to turn up for the session he was late and then mick taylor and i were there and charlie and bill and we just i said oh let me try this and i was just making up as I go along.

2:27So that's why it's a bit random. Yeah. But it makes sense that waiting for Keith Richards would destroy your notion of circular time. I thought maybe it was a more philosophical question. You could, maybe I went back afterwards and spruced it up a bit. Well, thank you for solving that misogyny. I appreciate it. So the new album. Yeah. So it's coming just maybe two and a half years after Hackney Diamonds. We recorded it last year now. and we did it this time last year, more or less. But the time span between Hackney Diamonds and the previous album of original material was 18 years. Yeah, 18 years, yeah.

3:06This is quick. Why did it come together so quickly? Well, I think we realized that we could, you know, we had a different method of making records, really. I mean, we've been just not being very lackadaisical and we weren't really getting down to it. And so when we got Andy Watt on board, you know, we decided that I said, I said, there's a deadline. You know, we used to always have deadlines because we had to go on tour with the record. The tour starts in March of the record hour. You know, I said the Hackney Diamonds, I said the deadline is Valentine's Day. Are you all going to remember that?

3:42So, you know, it's no excuses. You thought it was March. It's Valentine's Day. And we almost made it over four weeks. We recorded probably, I don't know, 14, 15 songs. I mean a lot of stuff is the way I do things some of the songs that I write I mean I demo a lot of them first so I go in with a friend of mine plays with the band Matt Clifford we demo a lot of the songs that I write I demo them and I can see they could go here they could go there they could be this group they could be that group the and then I saw a lot of my version of what I think the song sounds like it's already in my head everything else you layer on top of that and you might yeah you might say that bass is great on it i don't want to change anything or i just want to change just the chorus or i would just want to change this or i want to keep the rhythm guitar oh i don't want to keep the rhythm guitar i'll do it again you know it's it's complex some of the songs on on the new album are i hear them as relationship songs songs of regret or insecurity and it's interesting for me to hear Mick Jagger singing those songs at your age and think about how they land differently than if you were singing them at 42 or 32.

5:04And I want to know from your perspective, like artistically and emotionally, what are the ways that you can inhabit a song now that are different from how you used to inhabit yeah it's it it i don't well first of all i don't really think about it very much so you know in songwriting is about imagination and you know it's not all based on true experiences but you got to play the character of the song yeah but and the character that but the character singing the song is i it's a different character for me so when i'm seeing mr charm it's obviously a joke character you know um and it's supposed to be taken with a sense of humor and of course some of the incidents in the verses did happen and i can draw my own experiences of talking to women in relationships but i mean the whole thing of it's not supposed to be taken seriously you don't really think you're mr charm you know not really but then you might have another song which is more more heartfelt you know with more not so much humor and um back in your life which is a bit more of a kind of like it's a it's a classic theme you know you meet a woman and then she never calls you back you know you have a great time and she never calls you back has that happened to you a lot it's happened to me of course it's happened to me so i can draw on that i'm not saying happened yesterday but you can draw on that experience when it did happen to you, when maybe it happened to me when I was 40, you know, but I can still write about it now.

6:44Writing's about imagination, you know, it's not only about personal experience. So it's a mixture of personal experience and a mixture of imagination. You know, I want to maybe put the question in slightly different terms. You know, there's a movie performance of yours that I love, Man from Elysian Fields, where, you know, you play sort of like a middle-aged, he runs an escort service for women. It's kind of like a, but that performance has a lot of real feelings of regret in it. And I assume that you wouldn't have been able to give a performance like that earlier in your life. In the same way that it would make no sense for you to sing Some Girls now.

7:27No, exactly. But so are there things that you can do in a song or did on this album that you think, oh, I wasn't capable of giving, of inhabiting that lyric? That's a good question. I mean, it requires a lot of thought to give a good answer. That's okay. That's why we're here. You know, I can't really, it's hard for me to think of, I'm trying to think of actual concrete examples of the songs on the record. You know, I mean, you, I mean, I think quite a lot of it you could say that I wouldn't have written any of these songs when I was 30, maybe. I mean, honestly, I probably wouldn't have done. And then I've also got into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships, and then I throw a verse about politics in there.

8:19But I think that's a trick. This direction? That I've learned from other songwriters or I've listened to others, because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics. I put politics, social comment of any kind. It came in politics, something else. Like a song like the blues song, like Rough and Twisted, it's really just like a stream of consciousness, honestly. You talk about a woman and everything, but then you throw in this stuff. It's obviously about political, and it's obviously, you know, the club was called Conspiracy. All they wanted was tyranny. So you find yourself using these tricks.

9:03Did you ever see the John Mulaney special, the comedian John Mulaney, where he does a bit about working with you on Saturday Night Live? Did you ever see that? No, I never saw that. So he has this bit where he's talking about working with famous people on the show and specifically about working with you. And people would ask him, I'm paraphrasing, but people would ask him, like, is Mick Jagger nice? Yeah. And he says, of course Mick Jagger's not nice. Or he's nice for the version of the life that Mick Jagger has led. And he points out that you play to stadiums of people screaming for you for 50 plus years.

9:40That's got to change you as a person. Of course. Can you articulate how that's changed you as a person? I think, well, obviously, it's not normal. well it's not like most people's lives no no it's not it's not but but yeah it does affect you um you can become disassociated um from other people other people yeah and you and a lot of people in show business only hang around with people in show business um uh because because they got something in common you know they because they can relate to each other you know and and and you get disassociated from what people might call real life. Do you think you have?

10:30Oh, yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And then you can, I mean, you do fight against it. It's a conscious effort. It takes conscious effort to fight against being disassociated. What do you do to fight against it? Well, it's quite easy, really. I mean, you just go out and walk on the street on your own and go do normal things and go buy the New York Times. You know, but nevertheless, that's only temporary. So because I think psychologically, your actual state of mind is permanently damaged by this or affected or, I mean, i think i think when you're in your uh late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because you because it's a big ego trip basically i mean it's a huge you you have to have a huge ego to do this if you don't you have lots of people that do this that don't have huge egos have huge problems because they have to manufacture a completely different of course my personality on stage is not my i have a friend who who says you know the standing joke is that i behave at a dinner party like i behave on stage so was that friend right yeah we make jokes about it because it's absurd what you do on stage and of course i'm not really like my stage persona jimmy fallon which i'm just about to go and do he he thinks he's doing me when he does me but it's It's completely such an exaggerated version of me, but it works for him, you know, his version of me.

12:15But I mean, to me, the person to be like that all the time, this overbearing, shouting, ego-driven person, it's like, of course you're not really like that. But I think when you're in your late 20s and early 30s, you can be like that all the time. And there are people in show businesses that never switch off. A lot of them are comedians, and comedians, sometimes they can't switch off, they can't stop making jokes, or they get depressed. But I mean, it's a bit of a sweeping statement. Did you have to learn to switch off? Yeah, I think it comes with age. It's like if you do a movie, you do a character, right?

12:57So if you're a method actor and you do this character, you've heard all these stories about method actors. But they take it to the absolute extreme, so they like the character all the time and then after the movie's over they're still in the character for a long time it takes takes a long time to laugh off the character so which character do you go back to what was the character that you're going to retrieve is he is he always going to carry some of that character in his true character whatever that is so this is this is I think the show business dichotomy, and it's something you learn to live with, and you always hope, of course it isn't true, that you always hope that you're a so-called normal person underneath.

13:48Yeah. It's nice to have the perks, though. The perks are nice. Yeah, but it's not about the perks. It's about being these several characters. You're the character that plays the theater. You're the character that does the interview. You're the character that goes in on the stadium. You're the character in the recording studio. you're the character writing the song not this character all right now i'll be another character yeah i'll write a song then i'm going to be this character and i've got wounded love now i'm going to be like fuck you you know do you ever let the world see the person underneath the characters i'm not sure probably it's all there songs are pretty direct in a way um as a as a method of communication they're relatively direct compared to say a movie where you need like a lot of, you know, you've got someone writing a script and you're changing the script and you're, you want to change your lines and you've got 200 people and then it's all edited and chucked up in bits.

14:44Records are relatively simple compared to that. There are a handful of political lines sprinkled throughout the album. There's, you know, you sing about scuttling billionaires scrambling to their bolt holes in the sky, about dirty rat autocrats, rubber stamping judges. Yes. And I actually find it heartening to know that Mick Jagger sees the same problems out in the world that the rest of us do. So can you just tell me more about why you felt the impulse to include those kinds of lyrics? What are you seeing when you look around the world? Well, I mean, it's not the first time I've done songs with social comment.

15:25I like doing it, but in small doses. It's pretty like that. I mean, who does it in a huge dose? It's hardly anybody. It's pop music, you know? I mean, Ringing Hollow is more or less completely social comment. Right. But even then, so I had two songs that were on more or less the same subject, which is My Love of America, you know? And What's Gone Wrong? Ringing Hollow is a lament about the state of the country. Yeah, it's a lament, but it's a love song, but it's a lament. And it's about my own experiences, which are long and varied and encompass lots of different places in America. And not just being in New York and living in the Upper West Side.

16:13You know, I've spent a lot of time in America in places that Americans have never, ever been nor were ever likely to go to. You know, because they don't. not in our world living in new york well we're talking we're talking now living in l.a. or chicago but i spend a lot of time in these weird places like what well you know just on touring you see everything you see everything you you know how many people from new york you know that we sit around really go to cleveland very often you know and then you're there for five days it's not very long but you can see quite a lot if you go out every day you see different sides of it no I'm not saying, I mean, I enjoy it.

16:53You know, other wouldn't go out. I mean, New Orleans, people, I know people go to New Orleans and it's a tourist place. But, I mean, you find things there and then you find fantastic music scene. It's a unique town in the United States, completely unique. There's not like any other town. It's not, you know, so you explore these places because you have a love of the country and everything. So in Ringy Hollow, so I had another song, but the other song I thought was too down, and I rejected it and worked on Ringy Hollow instead. It's really a love song to Americans. You know, I fell madly in love with you before we ever met.

17:38So before I ever went to America, I was in love with America, like a lot of European teenagers you know, were, you know, see the movies and all this. So it's all about that. And then it talks about, you know, then it goes into the America of now and, you know, how can we, you know, ascertain what's going on? What's the last line of the song, right? I can't remember. I'm going to buy a brand new hat. Brand new hat. What's that a reference to? Something good is going to happen, I think. That's what it means. Yeah. uh uh i heard that as as like a a passive aggressive mega reference but maybe but you know who the one person that you that is named uh by their actual name on the album i might be missing one do you know the one as one uh elon musk elon musk yeah mad mogul mr musk yeah what's your impression of him i've never met him so i don't really i mean he's obviously hugely successful And, you know, he's someone who the term rock star gets applied to sometimes.

18:46And now it's become kind of a common trope where these tech entrepreneurs are called, you know, rock stars. And what does an actual rock star think of the way that that term has now become applied to anybody who has sort of the patina of iconoclasm? It's kind of weird because it's applied to all kinds of people, not just tech people. it's become a phrase that's thrown around for, in any form of success, you know, or I think it just means that you're just out there and, you know, in front of thousands of people and you're a huge success. I mean, that's what it means. I mean, to be called that, I think it's a big compliment to be called that.

19:25It's also a compliment to rock stars to use that actual phrase. I think it devalues rock stars. It devalues it, but it also, it bigs it up as well, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. Wait, I want to ask something that's sort of related to kind of what you were talking, what we were talking about earlier, how people understand like the persona of Mick Jagger. And my question is to do with how you understand your relationship with your audience. This actually maybe speaks to the politics stuff in a way too. because let me give two counterexamples to sort of triangulate the question. So on one poll, we have somebody like Bob Dylan, where if you go see him live, he's great.

20:08It almost feels like the crowd is incidental. Like he's going to be doing whatever he's doing, whether or not people showed up. On the other end of the spectrum, you have somebody like a Bruce Springsteen who clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth with his audience. It means something different to him. What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent, all those people out there? Well, first of all, it depends where you are and what kind of event it is. Like the New Orleans event, that's a festival. They didn't come to see you necessarily.

20:51You know, they bought their tickets before they knew you were coming. Right, if you play the New Orleans Jazz Festival. You know, we played that. Then we do Summer in the Park in London. You buy those tickets. Glastonbury. You buy those tickets because you like that festival. You always think something's good's going to happen, but you don't know. So they're not necessarily coming to see. They're not your biggest fans necessarily. I'm not saying that they hate you, otherwise they probably wouldn't be there. There's different levels of these kind of people, and you have to treat them in a slightly different way.

21:22The bottom line of my thing really is that But my job in the live music world is just those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can and for two hours or whatever it is to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages and their whatever. And if they have problems or just to give them, and they can have just the best time. It's similar going to a sports event, really, because everything else is shut out. You're just watching. Who's going to win? You're not worrying about everything else. Those things are out of your mind. I know you're still on the phone and everything.

22:13Oh, little Danny has hurt his tooth. But I know you can still have that. I know you can still have that, but in the old days you never had that, really. so so uh so that's my job so is to make them have the best time they possibly haven't and some audiences want to go completely nuts you know and and you so then you encourage them to go more nuts and say you can play to some places in the world it's different you know you you play in finland it's not the same as playing argentina you know there's a different they don't they don't want to go completely so nuts maybe they do i'm just using as as possibles you know but so you you don't want to be trying to churn them up into like get frustrated that they're not being demonstrative or you don't think they're having a good time because they might be quite relatively calm they might be relatively you know they're having a good time but in there i always say to everyone else that having a good time in their own way.

23:16But as you go to another place, and they're going completely apeshit, you know? And your job is to make them more apeshit. That's, I don't want to go apeshit, but let's go apeshit, you know? But I want to dig a little deeper on that question. Yeah. So you're talking about what your job is in those events, is to make people have a good time, to make, you know, they want to leave the concert feeling like it was worth it, and they couldn't forget their trouble. And you don't want to lecture them. You don't want to lecture them. But my question is actually about what meaning the job has to you. I have a job that has a basic description.

23:53It's very different than yours. But my job actually, it means something to me. And when it's working best, it allows me to satisfy curiosity I have about the world, meet people I wouldn't normally meet, ask questions of people that I would never get a chance to ask, and learn things that I find are valuable to me as a person. do you like what's Mick Jagger's version of that am I being naive and uh Pollyanna-ish to think that maybe there is one I have thought about this I mean obviously thought about it at the beginning of my career of course didn't think about it at all I was just learning how to do what you know it's totally your your about you you know and the band and are they gonna you know what's the next number and are they gonna play it right and am I gonna remember the words you know it's like It's just the basics.

24:43You're getting the basics down. Okay, so now after you've got through that accomplishment, which takes a bit of time to do, but then what you're saying is when I get out there, what does it mean for you? What does it all mean? For you, for you. Yeah, well, it's a lot of joy for me for a start. First of all, it's a huge buzz, adrenaline. adrenaline and it's a huge adrenaline buzz which must be the same as for a sport if you're playing sport if you're playing a football team you go out and play 50 000 people it must be about the same similar buzz so except me you know i don't have anyone coming at me so it's much easier than playing you don't have to dribble around someone and then sing i don't have to do any of that but but that's where the analogy breaks down so so you get out there and you get when you get out there first you get this massive adrenaline buzz and then your job really is really you have to control that adrenaline buzz you know you've got to look after yourself first and while you're doing that first five minutes then you're evaluating the audience so you you evaluate them you know in a good way i mean but you're evaluating them and how taking the temperature how they yeah what's the temperature of the crowd?

26:01How are they feeling? Is it cold? Is it raining? All these things happen. And are they already enjoying themselves? Or do they feel a bit listless after they wait too long? Have they had a hard time getting in? All these things have contributed factors and all that. So then you evaluate the audience and see how they And then a lot of them are a very long way away, which is one of the problems you're playing. Because mostly I play stadiums, right? If you're playing a theatre, you don't have these problems. If you're playing a theatre, you can very quickly become a group. And people, when I was starting out, showed me how to do that, were like little Richard I toured with for a long time.

26:52um he i had no idea that people even could do what he did you know performers didn't do that they just went out and played their songs and kind of said hello and that was it i mean he he was embracing them all getting them all to you know go along with his version of the world stand up sit down and make jokes and it becomes a community you know so for a small time it becomes this community so it's much more difficult to do that in a stadium we still have to do it so that's why stages have to be big that's why you have to get down there that's why you have to pay attention to all these people and that's why you have to talk to them because you want that community for those couple of hours to be a good community have fun that's your job i mean i'm not completely answering your question but i mean that's that's a lot of what i do you know i've read a huge amount of interviews with you going back, you know, decades.

27:51Poor you. They're interesting, but there are some things that stand out. And one thing that I've noticed that you almost never do in interviews is tell stories about being in the Rolling Stones. And I'm not asking you to, you know, be nostalgic or share some intimate detail, But like, there's gotta be some like old, you know, chestnut that you break out at cocktail parties or that your kids, if they ask you, Hey, what was it? What was it like being on tour with Stevie Wonder in 1972 or whatever that you like a break glass in case of emergency kind of story that you can tell. Is there, is there one?

28:31Here's a funny thing that happened when I was in the role. You mentioned Stevie Wonder. I shouldn't have. You mentioned Stevie Wonder. So we were playing Master of Garden with Stevie Wonder. we said come up and we'll play we'll do a we'll do a mash-up of satisfaction and uptight and uh so because they're both the same beat so um so so he comes on the stage and we do this mash-up uptight and then someone and i can't remember whose idea it might be mine um decides that we're going to throw custard pies at the end because it's the last day of the tour and it's the last number of the show. Why wouldn't you throw custard pies?

29:12It's rather unfair for Stevie. So we go, fuck it. Everyone's throwing custard pies, including Stevie's throwing custard pies, and everyone's covered in custard pies. And I loved it. All right, there you go. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for everything. Any questions are interesting. After the break, Mick and I speak again about whether we'll ever see the Rolling Stones back on the road. I hope so. I want to do it. I'm up for doing it.

30:03Mick Jagger:Reno to Rio. From cowhide to cowbell. AppleCard is a credit card that gives you the power to rock your personal world tour. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone and use in minutes with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. AppleCard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. I'm Paul Tenorio. I cover soccer for The Athletic. And I'm Amy Lawrence. I cover football for The Athletic. Whatever you call it, The biggest competition in the sport is happening right now, and the Athletics World Cup coverage has everything you need to follow the tournament.

30:36There's 48 countries taking part from the tiny island of Curacao to the five-time champions Brazil. Even if you don't know your offside from your onside, if you're eager to know more about the teams, the matches, all the stories on and off the pitch, we've got you sorted. Maybe you're the kind of person who's already up early every weekend, waking the neighbours when your favourite club scores. we'll make sure you get equipped with more information more insight than anyone you know we've got more than 70 obsessive reporters on the ground covering the ins and outs from every game i almost forgot to mention the best part amy free access to the athletics world cup coverage in our app download the athletic app and see you there

31:25Mick, we're officially rolling now. Okay. So what are we going to speak about today that we didn't speak about before? Oh, there's so many things. But I'd like to start with a question about something that just came to me this morning. So I was watching just clips of you on YouTube. And there's a great, it's like a 50-second clip of you. Maybe it's backstage. It's just you at a keyboard trying to work through the tune Shine a Light. and you're trying to remember the chords. And it's actually just this, it's a really beautiful short clip because you're playing those gospel chords. There's like, to paraphrase the song, there's a little gleam right in your eye.