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Mick Jagger Rolling Stones
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 @ 12:40 PM
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: The Rolling Stones
It is hard to imagine a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards jamming out to blues records at the young age of 11; acting out as a sort of rebellion from their straight edged-English lifestyle, “rock and roll singers weren’t educated people,” Jagger’s parents had told him, but this is how it all began and these two neighborhood friends broke out to be one of the hottest rock and roll bands of all time. Jagger and Richards have made music together that will stand the test of time, and despite drug abuse, fights and all the rough patches in-between, the friendship between Jagger and Richards has shown that it too is as solid as a “Rolling Stone.”
Jagger and Richards met at the youthful age of 7, but it was not until later that their friends would bond over their love of music and the love of the spotlight. “We met at the train station. And I had these rhythm & Blues records, which were very prized possessions because they weren’t available in England then. And he said, “Oh, yeah, these are really interesting.” That kind of did it. That’s how it started, really,” Jagger said.
Four years later, the duo was making music and performing at local venues. Richards had been playing guitar since he was five, and Jagger said, “’Well, I sing, you know? And you play the guitar,”’ and with that, everything started to happen.
For Jagger, the stage was an incredible place to be, and he always was recognized for his impressive performing skill, “If I could get a show, I would do it,” he began, “I used to do mad things-you know, I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees and roll on the ground,” he said. “It is a real buzz, even in front of twenty people, to make a complete fool of yourself. People liked watching Jagger act like a “fool” and he confesses that if they would have “thrown tomatoes at him,” he wouldn’t have gone on with it.
Luckily the crowd loved him, and word of this hip new English band spread. Jagger and his band were a success at a young age, and Jagger believed it was, “Very exciting. The first time we got our picture in the music paper called the Record Mirror… was so exciting, you couldn’t believe it.”
As their fame continued to expand, so did their talents. From recording and performing covers of songs by R&B artists like Marvin Gaye, Jagger and Richards began to create their own lyrics, and they were unlike anything anyone had ever heard.
Their song “Play with Fire,” written by Richards, was the first of their songs that really broke through, that addressed the lifestyle they were leading in England. “No one had really done that,” Jagger said…Songwriting had only dealt in clichés and borrowed stuff, you know, from previous records or ideas…but these dongs were really more from experience and the embroidered to make them more interesting,” he said.
In 64, the band made it to the states, touring outside of New York and L.A. Outside of these places, the Stones found America to be, “the most repressive society, very prejudiced in every way. There was still segregation and the attitudes were fantastically old-fashioned. Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness,” he said.
Their big hit in America was “Satisfaction,” written by Richards while sitting by a pool in Florida. The signature tune has become a classic. “It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at the time. And it really captures the spirit of the times,” Jagger said. The popularity of the song that made the Stones a worldwide thing, and they had the “Satisfaction” of finally making it in America, because of their hit. Satisfaction was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, “it changed us into a huge, monster band,” he said.
With all of their new-found success, brought about many trials to the band; the Jagger’s heroin addiction nearly took over the band, and Jagger had to take over the role as leader. “When you do drugs the whole time, you don’t produce as good things as you could,” Jagger said.
Their friendship continued, but it was a different Richards that he was now friends with, “People have different personalities when they’re drunk or take heroin…when Keith was taking heroin, it was very difficult to work. He still was creative, but it took a long time.” Everyone in the band was taking drugs and drinking at this time, and it affected everyone in different ways, Jagger explained.
Their friendship started to fizzle out in In the mid-Eighties, when the stones were no longer playing together. “We were friends before we were in a band, so it’s more complicated,” Jagger said, and they found a way to reconcile their differences. “We had a meeting to plan the tour, and as far as I was concerned, it was very easy.”
Today, their relationship is very good, “We see each other every day, talk to each other every day, play every day. But it is not the same as when we were twenty and shared rooms,” he said.