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Mick Jagger: “I Can Get It Up, But I Can´t Get It Down” (by David Marsh)
Of course, Mick Jagger was talking about flying the twin-engine Cessna which had brought him into the Marine Air Terminal in New York’s LaGuardia Airport from Montauk, 120 miles away at the eastern tip of Long Island and which, he said, he had piloted himself. “We were stacked up for half an hour circling at 1800 feet. We just missed the twin towers [of the World Trade Center]”
Jagger had flown in to do four interviews, casually, on the eve of the Rolling Stones’ latest assault on America. And, in fact, he exhibited some of the feeling of a general on the eve of battle. Dressed in a red and white striped velour t-shirt and tan denim pants, Jagger seemed at ease, but he wasn’t giving out much information about specific Stones strategy and tactics. Though you couldn’t tell what was really going on behind his mirror sunglasses, could any man with those lips be completely dishonest? Sure.
The Stones were living in Montauk, Mick said, “rehearsing. We’re breaking Ron Wood in. He knew some of the songs, but not all of them. I mean, you think you know ‘em, but a lot of times find that I can’t remember some of the words. Or I don’t know all of the chords.” (Ref. The Rolling Stones ’75)
The Stones would be doing some new material this time, but he wouldn’t be too specific about just what. “We never played a lot of songs from the last two albums. The last album, we haven’t played any of ‘em so probably we’ll do those.” He later acknowledged the band would probably dig back a pair of songs from those albums into the new album. He also cited “Fingerprint File” as one of his selections that “deserved” a better break. Most of what was at Stones’ recording—and possible live version of— “Shame Shame Shame,” the Shirley & Company hit last winter, but none of it was definite.
The next new Stones album—after the Atlantic and ABCKO repackaging due shortly—won’t be out until fall. “Unfortunately, the record is a slight problem, because we were right in the middle of recording and then we hadn’t added the new guitar player. So our session had to be a mix-up because recording guitar players and actually recording. I’d like to do a lot of new tunes, a couple we have that we haven’t put out, just to fill things out and if people enjoy playing them, and we’ll do ‘em, because they sound good.”
The addition of Ron Wood came as no real surprise to Stones watchers, but Jagger says that it was something of a surprise to him. And, of course, the extremely temporary basis of Wood’s relationship to the Rolling Stones confused everyone. “I thought of trying out someone permanently, to start with,” Mick explained. “With a band, you can get a really good guitar player, but on the road that’s not enough. The band is so tight within you he mustn’t be overpowered. Doing a tour of America with the Rolling Stones is not easy, for an inexperienced player. The guy is going to be under all kinds of pressure”
“So we thought about several people and then Ronnie said ‘I’ll do it if you like.’ And I said, ‘All right.’” He says these things in the broadest English accent imaginable, utterly bored in tone. “If we’d never played with him, Keith and me, we maybe never would have thought of it. But as we both played with him on his album, we thought of it. And it’s easy to get on with him.” Wood is on some of the tracks on the new Stones album; also present there were Harvey Mandel and Wayne Perkins, proving that some of the replacement rumors were based on more than imagination. (Ref. The Rolling Stones ’75)
Jagger seemed stunned when I asked if there were specific reasons for the Stones doing this tour. “That’s like me asking you if this is a specific reason for you doing an interview with me. I mean it’s my job. It’s my vocation…no musician is beyond that, no musician is infinitely too old. That’s not my occupation, or my pleasure.”
Nor, he insisted, would this be the group’s final tour. “Each time we’ve toured, they said the same thing. It isn’t going to be the last tour…it might be, it’s not been planned to be. I hate that question. I’ve been asked that question ever since I was 19 years old.”
He wouldn’t even answer the question whether it’s a tightly knit unit as it has emerged over the course of the tour. “Oh, I tell you. I’ve been living with Charlie and Keith, long before that Mick Taylor. I was living with Mick Taylor all the time, every night. And Ronnie Wood for a year. Bill would remain a bit separate, that’s true.”
Jagger did acknowledge that the Stones would like to do something a bit more unexpected in their ’75 show. “I want to do that. That’s to do with the feeling that you’re doing what people think you should do. Yeah, I think you should do the unexpected sometimes. But there’s value in repetition as well. The magic of repetition,” and here he smiled, “is a very difficult subject.” (Ref. The Rolling Stones ’75)
Jagger has been in the U.S. almost continuously since Goat’s Head Soup. That has led to speculation in some quarters that he might be thinking of becoming an American; he was even rumored to be seeking out Montauk real estate agents, in pursuit of a home for he and Bianca and the kid. “I’m not sure I’d be allowed to move here permanently,” he said. “I might be able to. I haven’t made any effort to yet, though. I think it’s a good place, but I like Europe too. I’m afraid that England at the moment doesn’t treat people very well, if I did fifty shows and I’d get the income from only one of them if I lived in England. Which sounds kind of unfair, but that’s the situation. I don’t know what they should do about it.”
“Maybe they should give me two shows—which would double me up. But it’s difficult to live there right now because the tax is 94 percent.”
Impermanence seemed the order of the day, as Jagger took time to discuss the lands he would like the Stones to do that aren’t ever toured in America and South America. “I want to play places that are uncharted rock ’n’ roll territory,” Jagger said. “Much as I love America, a lot of America we never go to. I don’t think we ever played Wichita. But I’d like to go to Asia, I’d like to go to India, I’d like to play the Middle East. I’d like to play more inEastern Europe. All those places, there is zero money, you know, but you are hoping to break even, if you can. Which is a concept most people who run rock ‘n’ roll tours can’t grasp, because what’s the point of spending a year touring and earning no money when you could be back in America, earning money. But that’s what I would like to do. There’s a demand for it, and it’s a demand that’s not being met.”
Jagger mentioned a few other places he’d like to play—Israel, Indonesia—but he seemed most excited, even after all the rebuffs, about playing Russia or China. “In Russia,” he said, “we’ve tried very hard. And we’ve received a lot of rebuffs. But there’s a genuine demand for the band in Russia, that I know. In China, though, I should think there’s absolutely zero. In Russia, there’s a genuine knowledge of Western music—jazz, rock, all that. Eastern Europe, everyone’s been over there, all the English bands go there, but they’re severely restricted. They let us in there, we’re gonna freak them out with ten times the sound.”
“Thing is, if we went to Russia, I’d not go with Steve Wonder, you know, and a whole bunch of people, not just the Rolling Stones. We’d play a week in Moscow, and we’d take everything—all the techniques we’ve learned, all the lights, everything we’ve learned about different types of music. And we’d just show them what we’ve done and if they don’t like it, too bad. But at least we’ve done it, you know? Those countries I’m not just thinking about for the Stones but for the whole… music of now, which in some sense we help…”
Enthusiastic as he seemed about promoting the “music of now” in Russia, Jagger was more reluctant about admitting the influence the Stones have had on the careers of such acts as Ike and Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder, who have toured with the group in the past. He wouldn’t say specifically, however, that sort of influence was one of the reasons the groups who appear on the ’75 tour—the Eagles, Little Feat, Rufus and the rest—being selected.
Jagger did add that playing outside North America and Western Europe had dragged the group into a political situation he hoped wouldn’t prove difficult. “You get into politics as soon as you start wanting to go, say, Indonesia. It’s a problem because the governments are so volatile and they don’t realize that we see them much more as a part of American culture, they think as well be Americans. They don’t see the difference, we’re white Anglo-Saxons in Brazil or Peru.” And millions of Americans would be proud to claim them. (Ref. The Rolling Stones ’75)
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