The resurrection shuffle

Rock’n’roll is not a business that forgives old age. Most of its icons lived fast, died young, or simply got out while they were still ahead.

We venerate Lennon and we scorn McCartney. Barrett is the genius of Pink Floyd, Waters and Gilmour are dismissed as bickering pensioners. Cobain remains a touchstone, Vedder becomes an irrelevance simply by continuing to breathe and refusing to have his youthful legacy set in amber.

Would Pete Townshend’s reputation have been better served by following Keith Moon and dying before he got old? In our present culture, yes. The experience of a 62 year old is considered musically worthless in a medium that becomes increasingly pre-pubescent – coming soon, the first embryonic pop star: keep on rocking in the womb world.

Worse, because the likes of Townshend, McCartney and Dylan continue to write and record what the tastemakers instantly dismiss as sub-senile geriatrica, their back catalogue is similarly trashed.

Had Mick Jagger been killed by the Hells Angels back in 1969 in the wake of Altamont as has been suggested recently by an FBI agent, he would be the ultimate holy man of rock’n’roll. Instead, he’s treated as a running joke. The man who was once the Lord of Misrule, the demonic ringmaster of all that was dark and seductive about rock’n’roll, he has been rendered impotent by caricature. It must be all the more galling for him because of the fact that he shares a stage with one of the few rockers whose legend simply grows larger as he grows older, Keith Richards.

Keef is the indestructible skeleton of the music that tore up the latter half of the 20th century, the Don, the overseer for whom the world only has more affection and more respect as the days roll by, as the wrinkles turn into cracks and the global reservoir of Jack Daniel’s diminishes.

Alongside him, Jagger is dismissed as a phoney. Keef is the real deal, Mick the chancer. Mick says he never reads the papers, and if he’s telling the truth, it’s probably a sound self defence mechanism. All superstars are painted with a few broad strokes, but while Keith’s enhance him, Jagger’s shred him. Nowadays, he’s this hipless, post-anorexic frame, topped by a leer of lips, once sexual, now dribbling.

Then there’s the viper’s tongue that lashes out and wraps itself around the throat of your daughter, maybe your granddaughter – it used to be your sister but all of us have got a little older since then. All except Mick, who never allows himself, or at least his persona, to age. And even that’s somehow sad.

Time then to challenge the conventional wisdom for Mick, in his prime, should be revered not reviled. Jagger invented the rock’n’roll star. He was its poster-child, the real deal. He was the pose, the swagger, the arrogance. Boys wanted to be him, girls just wanted him. In popular music, that’s ten-tenths of the law. Jagger is an archetype, he’s an original and his reputation demands rehabilitation.

More than anything, he is one of the great singers of the rock’n’roll era. Keith Richards might be the human riff, the lickmeister who just churns out those memorable Stones breaks, but without Mick’s voice, Keef’s dark, demonic music just would not be the same.

Imagine any other singer who could have voiced “Sympathy For The Devil” or “Gimme Shelter” on those records at that time. You can’t. Those songs are his, they belong to him, imbued with his personality, Jagger living inside them as they rise and fall on his extraordinary technique. That hasn’t changed since the day they were recorded. Forty years on, that’s a Sinatraesque achievement.

Whenever you think of the Stones, you have to think of The Beatles too, so symbiotic was their 1960s relationship. But they were very different animals, not least because the Stones had a front man, a singer who defined the job. John and Paul were never out front in the way as Mick, who would prowl the stage, a predator, caged for a moment, but always like to leap the chasm between band and audience, always ready to electrify the crowd, always capable of moving the experience from theatre to music hall to bear pit to boxing ring and back again, all with the arch of an eyebrow, the thrust of an arm.

In the end though, it’s as a singer that Jagger’s genius will longest endure. If you want proof, take a listen to “Under My Thumb”, one of the finest vocal performances of the rock era. It’s misogynistic lyric means the song is long since discredited, but so perfect is the phrasing, the timing, Jagger need never have recorded another thing and would still be seen as a giant. The contempt that drips from that mouth with the simple “uhmm” he inserts as he licks those lips and dismisses his girl as the “sweetest pet” is masterly. It’s a cornerstone achievement.



No, it’s not pleasant, but it’s a slice of real life, as it was and so, probably, shall it ever be. How often does music give you that these days?