Mick Jagger: The Audios Interview

Although one of the most philosophically oriented and intelligent performers around today, Mick Jagger is also one of the most laconic. Since the departure of Andrew Oldham from the affairs of the Rolling Stones, the burden of directing the affairs of the group have fallen on Mick, leaving him little time for much else, including interviews, photographs and all the other routines of the rock and roll star.

This interview and the photographs — probably the finest of Mick Jagger in the last two or three years — were completed in June at the Rolling Stones’ business offices in London. The interview was conducted by Jonathan Cott, assisted by Sue Cox. Although it is not the most thorough and complete set of questions and answers it is nonetheless the most extensive discussion yet available with Mick Jagger about the Rolling Stones — Someday the rest will be filled in, but in the meantime it’s a pleasure to present this as a starter.

The first thing we would like to talk about are your old songs like “Poison Ivy,” “Route 66” and . . .

“Poison Ivy,” did we ever record that? Oh, yeah. We did two versions of that. I don’t know which one you have ’cause it was never released in this country [England]. Where was it released in America?

It wasn’t released in America, it was put out in England. It was a very early recording with three other things, an EP. Right, “Bye Bye Johnny” and “Better Move On.” That was the second version.

Why did you choose that type of material in the beginning?
Well, I mean, we were kids, you know, just kids. We did everything and that was a groove. You see “Poison Ivy” was unknown in this country. It wasn’t a hit here by the Coasters, and other songs like “Money” were totally unheard of.

Like “I’m a King Bee”?
Well, that was pretty unheard of in America. What I mean is, there were a lot of these hit records in the states that nobody knew about here, we did them and after we thought they weren’t good; but at the time it was right.

But the Stones made these songs popular.
No, not really. Everybody did those kind of songs: The Beatles, The Hollies, The Searchers, everyone. I can’t explain why.

Isn’t it true that with songs like “Come On” and “King Bee” you really re-discovered Slim Harpo and Chuck Berry for a lot of Americans who never listened to that kind of music before?
Yeah. They never knew anything about it and that’s why we stopped doing blues. We didn’t want to do blues forever, we just wanted to turn people on to other people who were very good and not carry on doing it ourselves. So you could say that we did blues to turn people on, but why they should be turned on by us is unbelievably stupid. I mean what’s the point in listening to us doing “I’m A King Bee” when you can listen to Slim Harpo doing it?