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

From 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? Here's my conversation with Mick Jagger. Mick.

Hi, David.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

That's all right. Fun.

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, 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 this further moment. I was— we were waiting for Keith to turn up for the session. Yeah, 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 it up as I go along. So 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 mystery for me. I appreciate it. So the new album.

Yeah.

So it's coming just maybe 2 and a half years after Hackney Diamonds was.

We recorded it last year now. We did it last— this time last year, more or less.

But the time span between Hackney Diamonds and the previous album of original material—

yeah, it was a lot—

18 years.

Yeah, 18 years. This is quick.

Yeah. Why did it come together so quickly?

Well, I think we realized that we could, um, you know, we had a different method of making records, really. I mean, we've been just not being very lackadaisical, and we're not— weren't really getting down to it. And so when we got Andy Watt on board, you know, we, 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, you have the record out, you know. I said, the Hackney Diamonds, I said, the, the deadline is Valentine's Day. Are you all going to remember that? So that, you know, there's no excuses. It was— you thought it was March, it's Valentine's Day. And we almost made it. Over 4 weeks we recorded probably, I don't know, 14, 15 songs. I mean, a lot of stuff, it the way I do things, uh, some of the songs that I write, I mean, I demo a lot of them first. So I go in with, uh, a friend of mine who plays with the band, Matt Clifford. We demo a lot of the songs that I write.

I demo them and I can see, ah, they could go here, they could go there, they could be this groove, they could be that groove. The— and then I— so a lot of my version of what I think the song sounds like is 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, or 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, you know, they land differently than if you were singing them at 42.

Oh yeah.

Or 32. And I wanna 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 songs?

Yeah, it's— it— I, I don't— well, first of all, I don't really think about it very much. So, you know, it— songwriting's about imagination, and, you know, it's not all based on true experiences.

But you got to play the character of the song. But the character—

yeah, but— and the character— but the character singing the song is—

I—

it's a different character for me. So when I'm singing Mr. Charm is 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 on 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.

Does that happen 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 it happened yesterday, but you can draw on that on that experience when it did happen to you. Maybe it happened to me when I was 40, but I can still write about it now. Writing is about imagination. 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.

Oh, yeah.

Where 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.

No, no, exactly.

But so are there things that you can do in a song or did on this album that you think, oh, I— 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, that I wouldn't have done. 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, in, that are about personal relationships, and then I throw a verse about politics in there. Yeah, you know, but I think that's a trick, you know, that I've learned from other songwriters. Or I've listened to others, because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics. Or I put politics, social comment, you know, 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 just stream of consciousness. Honestly, it's, you are, you talk about a woman and everything, but it's, and 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.

Did you ever see the John Mulaney special where 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 it.

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.

You know, and he says, of course Mick Jagger is 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, that'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 you— it's not normal. 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. 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 that you get disassociated from what, what people might call real life.

Do you think you have?

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And then you can, uh, I mean, you, you, you can fight— you do fight against it. It's a conscious effort. It takes conscious effort to fight against, um, being disassociated.

What do you do to fight against it?

Well, it's quite easy really. I mean, you just, you just, you just go out and walk on the street on your own and go and do normal things and go buy the New York Times, you know. And but nevertheless, that, that's only temporary. So because you're— I think you're psychologically, you're your actual state of mind is permanently damaged by this or affected. Or, I mean, I think when you're in your late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because it's a big ego trip, basically. I mean, it's a huge— 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. I mean, 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 completely such an exaggerated version of me.

But it works for him, you know, his version of me. But I mean, to me, the person to be like that all the time, this overbearing, shouting, ego-tripping person, it's like, it's cool. Of course you're not really like that, but I think when you're in your late 20s and early 30s, you, you can be like that all the time. And there are people in show business that never switch off. A lot of them are comedians, and comedians sometimes they can't, 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? So, so if you're a method actor and you do this character, you've heard all these stories about method actors, but they, they, they, they take it to the absolute extreme. So they're 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's the character that you're going to retrieve? Is he always going to carry some of that character in his true character, whatever that is? So 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 normal, so-called normal person underneath.

Yeah. It's nice to have the perks, though. The perks are good.

Yeah, but it's not about the perks. It's about being these several characters.

Characters.

Yeah, you know, you're the character that plays the theater, you're the character that does the interview, or 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? And I'll be another character. Yeah, I'll write a song like, 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. 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 know, you're going to change your lines and you've got 200 people and then, and then it's all edited and chopped up in bits. Records are relatively simple compared to that.

There, there are a handful of political lines sprinkled throughout the album. There's, uh, 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 than 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. I like doing it, but in small doses. Let's put it like that. I mean, who does it in huge doses? Hardly anybody in pop music. It's pop music, you know. I mean, Ringing Hollow is more or less— yes, completely social comment, right? So, but, but even then, so I had to— 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. It's a lament about Yeah, it's a lament, but it's a love song, but it's, it's a lament. And it's my— it's about— and all— it's about my own experiences, which are long and varied and, and encompass lots of different places in America. And not just being in New York and being in— living in the Upper West Side, you know, that, you know, I've got— 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 now living in LA or Chicago, but I spent a lot of time in these weird places.

Like what?

What do you see? Just on tour, you see everything. You see everything. You know how many people from New York that we sit around really go to Cleveland very often? You know what I mean? And then you're there for 5 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. You 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. It's not like any other town. It's not, it's not, you know, so you explore these places and you have a love of the country and everything. So in Ring of Hollow, so I had another song, but the other song I thought was too down, and I rejected it and worked on Ringing Hollow instead. It's really a love song to America. You know, I fell madly in love with you before we ever met. So 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 So then it talks about, you know, then, 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, the last line, line of the song, right?

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. I heard that as like a a passive-aggressive MAGA reference, but yeah, 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?

There's 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. And 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 iconoclast?

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 any form of success, you know, that— 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. It's also a compliment to rock stars to use that actual phrase.

I think it devalues rock stars.

It devalues it, but also it bigs it up as well, you know.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Wait, I, I want to ask something that's, uh, sort of related to kind of what you were talking— what we were talking about earlier, the 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, uh, let me give two counter-examples. Yeah, to sort of triangulate the question. So on one pole we have somebody like Bob Dylan. Yeah, if you go see him live. He's great. It 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—

Yes.

—with his audience. It means something different to him. Yeah. What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent? All those people out there?

Well, it— well, first of all, it depends where you are and what kind of event it is. Like the, the, the one, the New Orleans event, that's a festival. They didn't come to see you necessarily, you know. They, they bought their tickets before they knew you were coming, right? If you play the New Orleans Jazz Festival, you know, we, 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 good is 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 it 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. My— the bottom line of my thing is really is that I— my, my job in, uh, in a live music world is just those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can and for 2 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— they can have just the best time. It's similar going to a sports event really, because you, you, you, you, everything else is shut out. You're just watching that who's going to win, you know. You're not worrying about everything else, you know. You know, those things are out of your mind. I know you're still on that, you're on the phone, everything, you know. Oh my, your little Danny has like hurt his tooth. But you know, I know you can still have that, but I know you can still have that. But in the old days you never had that Really. So, so, uh, so my— that's my job, so, is to make them have the best time they possibly have. 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 in Argentina, you know. It's a different crowd. They don't, they don't want to go completely so nuts, mate.

Maybe they do, I'm just using it as possibles, you know. But so 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 in there. I always say to everyone else, they're having a good time in their own way. And there's— but as you go to another place, and they're going completely apeshit, you know, so, so, and your job is to make them more apeshit. That's the one guy, apeshit, let's go apeshit, you know, so.

But I want to dig a little deeper on that question. Yeah. So you're, 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 can forget their troubles.

And you don't want to lecture them.

You don't want to lecture them. But my question is actually about whether, like, what meaning the job has to you. Like, I have a job that has a basic description. It's very different than yours. Yeah. But my job actually, you know, 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 help, you know, 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 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 about you, you know, and the band and are they going to, you know, what's the next number and are they going to play it right? And am I going to remember the words? You know, it's like, it's just the basics. You'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, what does it, what does it all mean for you? For you? Yeah, well, it was a lot of joy for me. First off, first of all, it's a huge buzz, you know, 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 got 50,000 people, 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.

I don't have to do any of that, 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 5 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? How are they feeling? Are they— is it cold? You know, is it raining? I mean, all these things happen. And, you know, do they— are they already enjoying themselves or they feel a bit listless after they wait too long? Have they had a hard time getting in? All these things are contributing factors in a while. So, so then you evaluate the audience and see how they feel. Yeah. And then a lot of them are very long way away, which is one of the problems you're playing because mostly I play stadiums, right? If you're playing a theater, you don't have these problems, you know.

You can, you can, you, you— if you're playing a theater, you can very quickly become a group, you know. And people, when I was, you know, starting out, would show me how to do that, were like Little Richard. I toured with for a long time. Um, 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 was embracing them all, getting them all to go along with his version of the world, stand up, sit down, and make jokes. And it becomes a community. So for a small time, it becomes this community. It's much more difficult to do that in a stadium. You still have to do it. So that's why stages have to be big. That's why you have to get down there. And that's why you have to pay attention to all these people. 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 a lot of what I do.

You know, I've read a huge amount of interviews with you going back, you know, decades. Poor 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 details, 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 like being on tour with Stevie Wonder in 1972?" Or whatever. That you— Yeah, I think— Like a break glass in case of emergency kind of story that you can tell. Is there one? Something. Here's a funny thing that happened when I was in the room.

You mentioned Stevie Wonder, so I shouldn't have— you mentioned Stevie Wonder, so we were playing at Madison Square Garden with Stevie Wonder. We said, come up and we'll play— we'll do a mashup of Satisfaction and Uptight. And, uh, so because they're both the same beat, so, um, so he comes on the stage and we do this mashup up tight. And then someone— and I can't remember whose idea, it might have been 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? But it's rather unfair for Stevie. Somebody— sorry, ah, fuck it, everyone's trying to cut the pie, including Stevie. He's throwing custard pies and everyone ends It'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. All your 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.

Mick, 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 much. 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— 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. And it feels like the apparatus of like fame and a crowd or any of like that has, anything like that has fallen away. And just a musician playing music and loving it. And it's really very pure and sweet. And I thought, I wondered, can you share a moment or a memory of just when you were playing music and kind of the machinery around the Rolling Stones just, fell away and you just had that love and freedom and lost yourself just playing a tune.

That's what you do when you're writing. I mean, the occasion that you describe, I don't really remember, but you said it was backstage. So that's a different thing. You're obviously getting ready for a show and trying to— I don't know what I was doing. I was probably going to do that song, but maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was just doodling with that song, you know, for fun. While you're waiting to go on stage sometimes. Sometimes you— I always have a piano in the room and a guitar and stuff, and my room's always the quietest because I don't let people in, like a load of friends and families. I don't— they can come in, but it's like, then you have to leave, you know what I mean? And so, yeah, so you can like— you have moments where you just doodle around, you know. What you're describing really is when you're writing. I mean, you don't— you're not thinking about going on stage or anything. If you're at home or in a studio or in a writing studio or somewhere writing, then you're just doodling. That's how songs get made, you know, really. It's just where you just doodle around and you don't— you're not thinking about anything else.

You— so the thing about writing songs is because popular songs are really quite Um, they're obviously really short, so, which is due to the length of the 78 record. Procreation, that's completely arbitrary reason that they're about 3 minutes. Yeah, the technology imposed this thing on it. I think that's— anyway, it doesn't really matter. That's what it is, you know, it's 3 minutes, 4 minutes maximum, something like this. So, so it's not going to be that much Uh, and, and it can be quite complex musically, but lyrically, how much lyrics are you going to really stick in? So musically, it's— it, you know, you can just doodle your way through this. So while your mind is free and you're having fun with it, then I think that's the most interesting part of the process. And I think, I think having Having fun is not like— I don't mean you're all standing around drinking and like shouting and jumping up and down, but I mean your mind is not really being serious. It's, yeah, it's playful. Playful is a better word than fun. So you can be playful, and then so if you're playful, you can, you can just let your mind just go this way, that way.

And if not, and don't be worried if not, if nothing happens, nothing happens. Something will happen later or tomorrow.

I saw— I was watching the video for In the Stars recently, which is the one where they use the deepfake technology for you guys. And I actually thought it was sort of a conceptually interesting choice for a variety of reasons. One of which is that, you know, I think of one of the sort of life-affirming things about the Rolling Stones is that you've been sort of defiant in terms of like what aging means. You know, you're still out there doing it and then doing the de-aging. I was like, oh, that's kind of an interesting choice to take. But, you know, I think that an opposite view of the band as being like defiant, defying aging and still being out there is that, you know, you guys all have Peter Pan complexes or something like that. But I want to know what you find interesting or hard to reckon with in terms of aging? Or like, what's good about getting older? What's less good? And I don't just mean physically, but metaphysically too.

There's nothing good about it. Nothing? No. Wisdom? No? Nothing. You don't get wisdom. You forget everything. Forgot all my wisdom. I might have had a couple of pearls drop, but I think I've probably forgotten what they are. Yeah. So no, it's not, no, it's not particularly, um, um, pleasant. And of course you can't do things as quickly as you want to and all that sort of thing. And, uh, physically, physically you can't do things that you would like to do. You've got to be, you have to be more careful. You can still do them, but you have to be a bit more careful when you do them. You know, when— if you're playing goalie in the football team and you— okay, you go in goal. They put you in goal a lot. I'm not really very good at it.

It's a metaphor for aging, being put in goal. You put in goal. I have another philosophical question. Yeah. And this one is about sex. And I'm not going to—

don't worry. Subject.

It's a big subject. I'm not going to ask you for any details, so don't worry. It is sort of— so So you're, you know, you have publicly been identified with sex for a long time, like a sex symbol. You write songs that are heavily sexual. You know, you're like an avatar of sexiness. You know, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by saying— Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Right.

You have a reputation as sort of a libertine, maybe. But that's outside perspective. But I wouldn't be surprised if You know, you also have had like sort of put sex as like central to your identity over the years. And I wonder how has your thinking about sex changed over time? Because it changes for everyone. So how has it changed for you, Mick Jagger?

Well, it's really difficult and I don't know the answer, honestly. It's a very good question. And people always say that when I'm thinking about what the fuck am I going to say to you? But, but, but I don't really know. I really don't know the answer. I'd have to, you know, you're, you're asking me these questions that is a really hard question, and, and I don't know what the answer— I could, if we sat down and we weren't recording this and we weren't doing an interview, we could talk about how that would work, and you'd have to tell me how it worked for you because we could compare experiences. But, you know, could we? But yeah, probably. Because that's how you get insights, you know. I mean, if you're just talking about yourself like a public person, it's weird. Um, the only thing I will say is that, that through your— throughout your life, your attitude to sex changes and your sexual tastes change. In, in one's life, sex is not a fixed point. So that's what I think obviously everybody's different, but I would like— okay, I would say, and I'm not— this is not my sort of area of expertise, honestly, because we're into areas of, of human psychology, sexual drive, uh, all this stuff is all pop psychology.

People, everyone's read a bit about it, but do they know about it? But my observation is that that you— that your attitudes to sex are different as you— as in different parts of your life. Yeah. I mean, your orientation, your sexual orientation may change. It may change completely, or it might change, oh, or it might— or avenues might open up to you that you hadn't realized, or then— or you— or, or you might close avenues that have opened up because you don't like them. Or you tried something that you liked for a couple of years and then you decide, oh, I don't really like it. And it's like other tastes. It's like tasting art, you know, that you, when you're very young, you might like these kind of pictures. And then when you're a bit older, you might change your taste in art. So I'm not saying sex is like art. Well, I am. What I'm saying is, but that's a question of taste. But why does your taste change? You know what? Right. There's something. Is it because of knowledge or is it just because you're bored with it? You know, do you know, or is it a combination of all these things?

You know, so you're tasting, you're literally tasting food changed. So when you're really young and you like alcohol, you drink sweet things normally, you know, when you like sweet wine, oh, that's like great. And then, then someone tells you that's not really, you shouldn't be drinking that, you know, you should drink this. And you try that again. I really don't like that, but I'll try it, you know. Like when we were really teenage, when we were teenagers, we like rock music, but we— other, other more snobbish people say, you should listen to this jazz, you should listen to this jazz, you know, you should listen to jazz, you know, it's more intellectual, you know, than— so, so that in Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing, he's an intellectual writer, it's almost Tom, and, but he's going on this program called Desert Island Discs, which is a program where you choose records to take with you on your desert island, and that's all you, that's the only music you can have. And he, he says, but all I like is like to do Ron Ron. And he's, he's an intellectual, so he says they expect me to choose Schoenberg and Beethoven.

And, and so, so, so he's an intellectual. So it's, it's this thing of being an intellectual. So you say But yeah, okay, play me that jazz music, you know. Okay, Dizzy Gillespie, play me Dizzy Gillespie. Okay, do I really like that or do I like Chuck Berry, you know what I mean? So, well, I'll start to appreciate it, you know. And we used to like play the Modern Jazz Quartet, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, I used to go and see the— I used to go and see the Modern Jazz Quartet in concert. I mean, it's expensive. Everyone's sitting down very seriously listening to it. No one was like standing up, you know.

Talk about a rabbit hole. I asked you about sex, we ended up at the modern jazz quartet.

How do I get out of that question?

But I thought you gave a very, you know, I thought you gave a good answer. You said you didn't know how to answer it, then you gave a good answer. I want to also know a little bit more about sort of how you see your musical evolution, because I think it's fair to say that, you know, probably in that sort of magical period between '68 and '72, is the period when sort of what people expect a Rolling Stones album to sound like kind of got solidified. And the new album, people say, you know, this, it sounds like a Stones album. And I think they mean it sort of has the signifiers of the classic Stones album. And I know there's been lots of experimenting with, you know, reggae, funk, disco over the years. But I think it's true that there is a Rolling Stones sound. And as a, sort of a creative—

I could kind of argue against that in a way if I want to.

What, what argument would you make? Well, I'm going to tell you, I mean, I argue that you're wrong, but yeah, no, but I can take another position, you know.

Okay. I mean, just for the sake of it, I could. Music, because if we're talking about musicality, that, that's what you're best known for, you know, that what the most people, if they are not particularly vaguely interested but not very interested, um, then you're absolutely right, you know, that that's what you would say. But I could point out to lots of other things. I'm not a huge student of the Rolling Stones over, you know, I mean, I can't— haven't got it all at my fingertips and lists of it. If I did, I could point at them and say, you see, I could point to like Miss You, so many. Yeah, I could say, well, that was Hot Stuff, that was that. Yeah, but then I could point at Lady Jane, you know, right, like an Elizabethan.

Yeah. And I point to As Tears Go By.

I could point to Angie. Yeah, I could point— I mean, I could point to Paint It Black. Even like Under My Thumb that someone played to me the other day. I mean, it's got— it's vocally, it's very me, but instrumentally and the way it's played is so light and it's so, it's so sort of like, it's not heavy at all. Everyone's playing really lightly. And so there's other versions of the band. And that's what I think makes the band an interesting band. Obviously, it's not the same people either.

You know, She Smiles Sweetly is another one from— Yeah, very old. But, but, you know, it's interesting that the songs that you noted are all songs that came before, I guess, with the exception of Angie, before that period I suggested.

Yes, but even after that period, I can point out other ones. Yeah. But it's just that I don't remember them. Them as well, you know. But there's, there's— and there's not Elizabethan ones, but there's, there's many other ones. And you said Angie, that's not in that period. And there's lots and lots of others, you know. Waiting on a Friend is a, it's a kind of rumba, you know, ballad rumba. I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's like— and very light with an alto saxophone lead. It's not really what you would expect.

But are there Are there styles of music that just, you know, you maybe wanted to do or sort of like dream projects that you had in the back of your mind that you thought sort of because of maybe audience expectations or what you thought the band would be interested in that you didn't pursue?

Yeah, well, yes, but you can pursue them, but you don't take them to the kind of doing a whole album of them. You know, I can say I like samba music, so I did Sympathy for the Devil. Never done another samba, but I listen to samba all the time. So I could say, well, I mean, but no one's interested in me doing a whole samba record. I can't imagine anyone being interested. I mean, I'd like to do another samba tune, but, but you don't want to pursue your whole interest in samba down so far down the road. I mean, I'm interested. I mean, I love Latin music of all kinds, and like that, rhythmically speaking, there's so many different rhythms. And, and yeah, I, I would like to pursue that, and maybe I could have or should have pursued that more because I, I'm really interested in those rhythms, you know. So, so yeah, so, but if you're in a rock band, you get to touch on them, but you don't get to fully explore them.

Um, there's a beautiful version you did of, uh, Long Black Veil with The Chieftains, probably 30 years ago, and I thought, oh, it would have been it would be great to hear a Mick Jagger album of like traditional, uh, Irish, British, and American folk tunes.

Yeah, I mean, I've, I've done that, and I, I mean, thing is that the— all the members of the band, of Keith and Brian, and to some extent all like that music. Ronnie also. I mean, we It's kind of our kind of, in a way, it's our home music, you know. And even though the sort of 80% of our music is influenced by Black culture, which we have a huge debt to owe to Black music and everything, we also acknowledge our own roots in that, in that other music, you know, by playing those songs, you know, I mean, Long Black Fella, Long Black Fella was I think I heard Johnny Cash do that first, but it sounds like an Irish or English song. And I did it with The Chieftains, which is an Irish— was an Irish band. But it's, it's, you know, it could be an English song or border ballad or, you know, that I was— we were all very interested. We're all brought up to read border ballads, which are neither English nor Scottish nor Irish, but it's— they're amalgam of all of those things are very, very similar. Background.

I'd also like to ask you about rock a little more broadly and generally. You know, it's this music that you've given your creative life to. And, you know, still in 2026, the biggest rock concert draws are like Gen X bands and baby boomer bands. And I've seen data that actually suggests that catalog music, you know, older music has more streaming market share than younger music. And and is continuing to trend that way. And I think that even if you think about, you know, like the buzziest younger rock band of today, right, which is a band like Geese, I don't know if you're familiar with them. Yeah, I am. Even a band like that still kind of feels like a, you know, culturally marginal band to a certain extent. And so my question to you is—

What do you mean culturally marginal? You know, they're not in the center of the culture.

Like, you know, it's— they don't have—

Well, no, but I mean, I was talked about them in an interview. Someone asked me, I, I, everyone was talking about this band, and when I played them, I thought it was going to be more like an indie band, you know. But it was much more experimental than I thought, which I thought was great, you know. I mean, I liked it, but it wasn't what I thought when— what from people describing it to me or reading about it. So yeah, so that's very hard for a band as experimental as that to be to break through, be, you know, in a, in a, in a center of mainstream music, I think, at this— at any time. I mean, maybe in the '70s it might have been, but, but now I wouldn't have thought so. But anyway, I, I mean, maybe there will be, maybe I'm wrong.

Do you have thoughts about the vitality of, of rock music as a whole, or its place in the culture right now, given that the most popular exponents tend to be older artists.

It's kind of an unusual— I think, but, uh, despite the fact that, you know, um, uh, rock music as a, as a, as a genre is not really the mainstream center of music, it still has a lot of supporters, and it still has a lot of young teenage people that want to play it. You know, in a, you know, in all kinds of forms of it, you know. And you hope that it evolves, you know. Rap was kind of the center of our music like 20 years ago, and now it's like rap is not the force it once was, really. But everyone incorporates it, you know. You incorporate it into everything. It's, it's one of the strands of popular music, like rock is, like, you know. Rap is, like straight pop is, like all these things. So we have all these trends in popular music, um, that really— I, I wonder, you know, it's really rather artificial a lot of times when we describe music. Didn't we touch on this before in our earlier conversation? So it's, it, it's a marketable— when you have to market things you want to tell people what they are.

So this is mint flavored. Okay, so everyone normally likes that. So it's mint flavored ice cream, it's mint flavored this. So you put the genre mint. I'm selling mint flavored products. It's a bit like that music.

So people know what they're getting and you can sell it to them.

They know what they're getting. So you don't want to scare them. So we've got cut up all our genres in little slices. But the reality is that most musicians appreciate all kinds of music. So what I'm saying is, is there's a lot of music, has a lot of history, and it shouldn't really be— by intelligent people shouldn't be slicing little bits and say, I only like this bit, you know. I don't like folk music. What does that mean? Doesn't mean anything. What's folk music? All these invented things, you know, right?

They're arbitrary distinctions. They are. Yeah. I saw a quote from Keith the other day saying, you know, the band probably, you know, is probably not going to be able to do long tours anymore, that there might be, you know, there's hopes to do residencies and things like that. And who— I don't know how you think, but do you— you must have some doubt about whether or not the Rolling Stones will ever go on a classic—

Yeah, I mean, I've doubt about it when I hear that, you know, I I have doubt about it. I don't mind touring at all. I mean, residencies are— if you can't do any shows and you can't go anywhere, then you have to do residencies. Obviously you can't go, you've got to go to the— well, you have to go to the arena. You're not going to do it for your bedroom, but I suppose you could, but you've got to go somewhere. So I would say, well, you can't just do— so if Harry Styles says he's doing residencies, but he's doing London and Amsterdam, you know, and so on and so on. It is a tour, you know, it's not only London, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, but do you think the Stones will do another, you know, world?

I hope so. That's all I'm saying. I would hope so. I'm, I'm very pleased to be able to— I want to do it. I'm, I'm, I'm up for doing it. I like touring. So, but the thing is, the only thing about doing residences, it makes it— for the people that want to come and see you, it makes it much more expensive. It really does. I mean, think about it. You have to, you have to travel, you have to get a hotel, and you have to buy a ticket, which is not going to be cheap, you know. So that you— I mean, it'll be less cheap— it'll be cheaper than the World Cup in the United States. It was much easier when it was in Germany because Germany is a smaller country.

Do you think, do you think you'll know when you've walked off the stage with the Rolling Stones for the last time?

No, no, I don't think you'll ever know. I mean, maybe I have.

That's true. Maybe it's happened.

I don't know. You never know. You could get run over by a bus outside my house. You never really know, do you? You don't know what's going to happen to you in life. But I mean, I personally hope to be able to tour again. I love touring. I like going places, you know. I like meeting people. I like to go into— I like to go to weird countries, you know. Go and do shows. I was doing a promotion with Indonesia, and I did a show in Indonesia once on my own, which is so crazy. It was so hot, it was unbelievable. People about Europe's heat wave, it was so hot. And I was out there and it was daytime, didn't have any lights. I said, what am I going to wear? And this guy reminded me of my show in Indonesia, and I said, yeah, I do a show in Indonesia. So, you know, it's It's really— I love doing that. I love going to India. And when one— we did two shows in India, you know, now India is a big market.

Can I ask you a completely tangential, random question? I was looking and now— so the fact that I couldn't find it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I could not find any quote or record of you commenting on singing backing vocals on Carly Simon's "You're So Vain." No, I can't find it anywhere. And I— but what were you supposed to say?

I remember doing it.

But when did you realize that some people thought the song was about you?

Why would it be about me when I'm singing on it? I know it doesn't make sense, but people, people think that's what it was. That was a big thing, wasn't it? You know, because she would never reveal who it was about. And then she— I never thought to ask. Yeah, I never thought I was just a song. It sounds like a good title. It was just a song. I'm just the backing vocalist because I knew the producer whose name I'm now going to forget.

Richard Perry. Oh, there you go.

Yep. Richard Perry was a guy I knew, you know, and he was in London. He just phoned me up and said, can you do the backing? Because I love doing those sort of things, especially with, you know, if it's a female, you're the male part, you know what I mean? Slightly different doing it with men, but I don't care. So I just went along and did it. I thought it was a great song, you know, and, uh, it was a big hit for her. And I was never credited with the feature. These days it'd be the feature, you know, be Carly Simon featuring Mick Jagger. And those—

but you never said to her, you never said, who's this one about?

I'm louder than her on some of it.

I know, in the chorus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, well, thank you for clearing that up. Now we've now added to the, uh, sum total.

Why we want to clear things up while we're talking about cleaning things up. So I said to you at the beginning before we recorded, I said, well, now the record's been reviewed everywhere, a lot of reviews for it, and I got lots of nice reviews. It's weird how people though, they give you really— I mean, it's gotten some great reviews and I'm really appreciative of that.

But something's nagging at you. What is it?

No, no, I'm not— it's not nagging. It's just that people, they hear some one word and they, and but they don't really listen to the line. So it's like, so Mick Jagger has a go at Elon Musk. Well, yeah, you're not listening to the line, you're only listening to Musk. That's all you hear, Musk. He must be having a go at him. Yeah, I do call him mad.

I mean, and he's the one person you name on the whole album. No other person.

He's name-checked. The only name check. It seems like it would have some importance. Yeah, but the funny thing is when I wrote that, I was like, it was, I was thinking that because of him, they were able to get those astronauts back, you know, that was stuck because he provided the transportation because NASA couldn't provide the transportation. So that line, the line of the song is about when I was a kid, I used to want to go to Mars and everything. And then I said, who would trust— who would you trust to get you into space? Would you trust Boeing, or was it NASA, or was it mad mogul Mr. Musk? So it's really a sidewinding compliment because he was the one that I remembered was able to do that when the others couldn't.

Yeah, well, that's what you get for using the adjective mad. Well, and mogul. And mogul.

Mogul doesn't always go down well either. No one likes a mogul. No one likes a mogul. Or he's— it's a Persian word, but nobody likes to be called it.

You know, I had asked you about the lyrics to Sway when we spoke the first time. I have another lyric question that I want to ask you. My favorite Rolling Stones song, which I think is also the best Rolling Stones song, is You Can't Always Get What You Want. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's a simple sentiment, but I actually think there's something profound in the chorus, right? Which is you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. And what's something that, or the last thing that you really tried to get that you wanted to get? Oh my God. That you couldn't find. That's so nice. That you got what you need.

Leads to a personal wish. Sure. No, I think I— I, uh, I, I can't recall one that stands out, honestly. Well, that's a good life, my friend.

I mean, I'm sorry.

No, I mean, obviously there's all kinds of things in daily life that you— that everyone has frustrations. Um, I mean, I was very frustrated professionally for years that with the Rolling Stones never made any new music. That was a huge frustration for me. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and I solved it, you know. Yes, I solved it. And I mean, with everyone else's help, obviously, but they had to agree to it, you know. It was like, huh? And I, you know, I mean, it's like, okay, um, that— but, you know, it's like, that was a huge frustration that I, I'm, I mean, you're asking me these really difficult questions. I'm trying to come up with something to say it, but that was a huge frustration. And if you'd have interviewed me 4 years ago, I would have said that.

There's another old clip I saw of you from a press conference, probably— Really old one. One of those—

because we don't have press conferences for hundreds of years. Really old.

I think maybe connected to a Madison Square Garden concert in the late '60s, something like that. And someone just ask, you know, just asks you some vague question like, how do you think about being in the Rolling Stones? And you describe the Rolling Stones as financially dissatisfied, sexually satisfied, philosophically trying.

Yeah, this is a pat answer to a news conference in New York where you used to say people used to throw you just really dumb questions, but that was quite a good one.

Yeah, that was. But so don't give me the pat answer in 2026. Where do you stand with those three things?

My interest in philosophy is superficial, right? Um, I mean, merely because I find it a really hard subject. I, I mean, I really, I really find it difficult because I, I need a teacher. I can't just do it from reading. I, I can't. And when I was in college, I did some, some philosophy courses, and that's hundreds of years ago. And I didn't really— I make one reference to— in the song— oh, in Jealous Lover, there's a Plato reference.

Shadows on the wall.

Yes, you got it. Well done. You got it. So, yeah, but I said— but on my cave, it's even more obvious. Um, uh, so, but I find it a really hard subject to educate myself into. And I've recently read a couple of books, I'm really finding it hard. And so, and they're always, always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and they're always like disagreeing with their masters. What? And then the master disagrees with— then the— I was reading this book on Kant, and he— so but he has this pupil, I can't find his name, who then he writes a book attacking his own master. Then Kant replies to him, you know, they're quite rude to each other, and then they have to make up later. And, and, and none of it I can understand what they're really talking about, you know. Was Kant a Christian? I think— was he an atheist?

I think it's cool that you're reading Kant.

Well, it's all vaguely fashionable.

Um, wait, but, but so let's say Phil Xavier's still trying, and let's just, you know, I'm sticking with that one.

I'm still sticking with that 1965 quote.

All right. Um, Mick, you know, thank you so much. A corny way to end, but it's been a gas, gas, gas.

Oh no, that's awful, David. That's terrible.

That's Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones' new album Foreign Tongues is available now. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@theinterviewpodcast. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme. It was edited by John Wu. Mixing by Sophia Landman. Original music by Marian Lozano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Seth Kelley, Paula Neudorf, Joe Bill Munoz, Eddie Costas, Amy Marino, Mark Zemmel, David Herr, Kathleen O'Brien, and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. I'm David Marchese, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.