The Interview - Mick Jagger Isn't Sure He Ever Lets the World See the Real Him

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

The legendary rock star, now 82, on how fame, touring and aging have changed him. Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] Watch our show on YouTube: youtube.com/@TheInterviewPodcast For transcripts and more, visit: nytimes.com/theinterview Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From The New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marquesie. Mick Jagger truly needs no introduction. He's the legendary frontman of the Rolling Stones who are releasing a new album called Foreign Tungs. I've been a fan of the Stone 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 is released, from undeniable classics like My Fourses. 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. 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, it's a question. Do you remember where that line came from? No, I just made it up at this for the moment. We were waiting for Keith to turn up to the session, he was late. And then Mick Taylor and I were there and Charlie and Bill. And 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, you know, maybe I went back afterwards and spruce it up a bit. Well, thank you for solving that misbeating. I appreciate it. So the new album.

Yeah. So it's coming just maybe two and a half years after Hackney Diamonds. We recorded it last year now, and 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 was 18 years. Yeah, 18 years, yeah. This is quick. Why did they come together so quickly? Well, I think we realized that we could, you know, we had a different method of making records.

records really. I mean, we've been just not being very lackadaisical and we weren't really getting down to it. And so when we got Andy Watt on board, you know, 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 and the tour starts in March of the record out, you know, I said, the Hackney Diamies, I said, the deadline is Valentine's Day. Are you all going to remember that? So there's no excuses. You thought it was March. It's Valentine's. Valentine's. day and we almost made it over four weeks we recorded probably I don't know 14 15 songs I mean a lot of stuff is the way I do things some of the songs that I write I mean I demo a lot of them first so I go in with a friend of mine plays with the band

Mac 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 group. And then I... So 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 just want to change this. Or I want to keep the rhythm guitar. Oh, I don't want to keep the rhythm guitar. I'll do it again. You know, it's complex. Some of the songs 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 or 32. And I want to 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 sense.

Yeah, it, it, I don't, well, first of all, I don't really think about it very much. So, you know, in, it, it's, like, about imagination and, you know, it's not all based on true experiences. But you got to play the character of the song, right? Yeah. But the character, but the character seeing the song is, it's a different character for me. So when I'm seeing Mr. Charm, it's obviously a joke character, you know, and it's supposed to be taken with sense of humour. 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. Not really. But then you might have another song which is more more heartfelt you know with more not so much humor and

back in your life which is a bit more of a kind of like 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. Is that happened to you a lot? It's happened to me of course it's happened to me

of course it's happened to me so I can draw on that and I'm not saying it happened yesterday but you can draw on that, on that, on that experience when it did happen to you, when it might be happened to me when I was 40, you know, but I can still write about it now. Writing is about imagination, you know, 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 when, a man from Elysian Fields. Oh, yeah. Where, you know, you play sort of like a

middle age, 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 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 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. I put politics, social comment, you have any kind, it can't be politics, something else. Like a song like, the blues song, like Rough and Twisted, it's really just like, just stream of consciousness, honestly. You talk about a woman and everything, 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 Malaney special where the comedian John Malaney where he does a bit about working with you on Saturday Night Live? Did you ever see that? No, I never saw that. 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's not nice. Or he's nice for the version of the life than 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, it's not. It's not. But yeah, it does affect you. you can become disassociated from other people. From other people. And a lot of people in show business only hang around with people in show business because they've got something in common,

you know, because they can relate to each other. You know, and you get disassociated from what people might call real life. Do you think you have? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. And then you can, I mean, you can fight, you do fight against it. It's a conscious effort. It takes conscious effort to fight against being disassociated. What do you do to fight against it? Well, it's quite easy, really. I mean, you just, you just go out and walk on the street on your own and go, do normal things and go and buy the New York Times.

You know But nevertheless That's only temporary So because I think your psychologically Your your actual state of mind Is is permanently damaged by this Or affected or I mean

I think 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. I have a friend who says, you know, the standing joke is that I behave at a dinner party like I behave on stage. So. Well, is that friend right? Yeah, we make jokes about it. Because it's absurd what you do on stage. of course I'm not really like my stage persona.

Jimmy Fallon, which I'm just about to go and do, 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-triving person.

Of course you're not really like that. But I think when you're in your, late 20s and early 30s, you can be like that all the time. And there are people in shows that never switch off. A lot of them are comedians and comedians sometimes 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 if you're a method action, you do this character, you've heard all these stories about method actors. But they take it to the absolute extreme, so they 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 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, like, dichotomy. And it's something you learn to live with. And you always hope, of course it isn't true.

They always hope that you're a normal, so-called normal person underneath. Yeah. It's nice to have the perks, though. The perks are in it. Yeah, but it's not about the perks. It's about being these several characters. You know, you're the characters. that plays the theatre, you're the character that does the interview, you're 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, I'll write, now it'll be another character. Yeah, I'll write a song, 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 a script in the aisle. You want to change your lines and you've got 200 people and then it's all edited and chocked up in bits. Records are relatively simple compared to that.

There are a handful of political lines sprinkled throughout the album. There's, you know, you're saying 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 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, so it's pretty like that. I mean, who does it in a huge doses? Hardly anybody in pop music, you know? I mean, ringing hollow is

more or less completely social comment. Right. So, 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. Bringing hollow as a lament is a lament. Yeah, it's a lament, but it's a love song, but it's a lament. And it's my, it's about my own experiences, which are long and varied and

encompass lots of different places in American area and not just being in New York and being in, living in the Upper West Side, you know, you know, 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? But the

Because they don't, not in our world, living in New York. Well, we're talking now, living in Lately or Chicago. But I spend 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, you know, that we sit around, really go to Cleveland very often.

You know what I? And then you're there for five 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 don't say, 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. There's not like any other town. It's not, it's not, you know, so you explore these places. You have a love of the country

and everything. So in Ring Hollow, so I had another song, but the other song I thought was too down and I rejected it and worked on Ringy Hollow instead. It's really a love song to America. It's, 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's, so then it's, talks about, you know, 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 line of the song, right? I can't remember. I'm going to buy a 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 passive-aggressive, mega reference, but maybe. But you know who the one that you that is named by their actual name on the album I might be missing one do you know the one there's one one 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 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 iconoclass?

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, in any form of success, you know, 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 want to ask something that's sort of related to kind of what you were talking, what we were talking about earlier, 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. And let me give two counter examples to sort of triangulate the question. So on one poll, we have somebody like Bob Dylan, where if you go see him live, he's great. It almost feels like the crowd is incidental. Like, he was going to be. 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 with his audience. It means something different to him. What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent all those people out there? Well,

first of all, it depends where you are. And what kind of event it is, like the one, the New Orleans event, that's a festival. They didn't come to see you necessarily. You know, they bought their tickets before they knew you were coming. Right, if you play the New Orleans Jazz Festival. You know, we played that. Then we do somewhere in the park in London. You buy those tickets, Glastonbury, you buy those tickets because you like that festival. You always think something's good going to happen with you, you don't know. So they're not necessarily coming to see they're not your biggest fans necessarily I'm not saying 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 the problem line of my thing is really is that my my job in the live music world is just those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can and and for two hours or whatever it is to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages and their whatever and and and and if they have problems

or just 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're just watching it 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 and everything. Oh, my little Danny is like hurt his tooth. But, you know, I know you can still have that. I know you can still have that, but in the old days, you never had that really. So, so, so my, that's my job.

So is to make them have the best time they're supposed to have. And some audiences want to go completely nuts, you know. And you, so then you encourage them to go more nuts. and say you can play to some places in the world is different, you know, you play in Finland. It's not the same as playing in Argentina, you know. It's a different, they don't want to go completely so nuts. Maybe they do. I'm just using as possible, 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. But in there, I always say to everyone else, they're having a good time in their own way. But as you go to another place, and they're going completely apeshit, you know. So, and your job is to make them more apeshit.

That's the other one that's going to go apeshit, but let's go ape shit, you know, so. But I want to dig a little deeper on that question. Yeah. So 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 trouble.

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 what? I have thought about this. I mean, obviously you thought about it. At the beginning of my career, I 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,

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 all mean? For you, for you? Yeah.

Well, it's a lot of joy for me, first of all. 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 go out and play 50,000 people. It must be the same, similar buzz. So, you know, I don't have anyone coming at me. So it's much easier than playing sport. You don't have to dribble around someone and then sing.

I don't have to do any of that. But that's where the analogy breaks down. 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 five minutes, then you're evaluating the audience.

So you evaluate them, you know, in a good way, I mean. But you're evaluating them. Taking the temperature. Yeah, what's the temperature? crowd how are they feeling are they is it cold you know it is it raining i mean all these things happen uh and you know do they are they already enjoying themselves or they feel a bit listless if they wait too long have they had a hard time getting it all these things have contributed factors and 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 you're going to you're playing because mostly I play stadiums right if you're playing a theatre you don't have these problems you know you can you if you're playing a theatre 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 tour with for a long time 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, you know, go along with his version of the world, stand up, sit down and make jokes and it becomes a community,

you know, so for a small time it becomes this community. It's much more difficult to do that in a stadium. We still have to do it. So that's why stages have to be big. That's why you have to get down there. That's why you have to pay attention to all these people. And 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, deck. 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 detail. But like, there's got to 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, what was it like being on tour with Stevie Wonder in 1972 or whatever, that you, like a break. glass in case of emergency kind of story that you can tell. Is there one? Well, here's a funny thing that happened when I was in the world. You mentioned Stevie Wondersoe.

I shouldn't have found you. You mentioned Stevie Wonder, so we were playing at Massaher Garden with Stevie Wonder. We said, come up when we'll play, we do a mashup of satisfaction and uptight. And so, because they're both the same beat. So, so it comes on the stage and we do this mashup. out of time and then someone and I can't remember whose idea it might be mine decides that we're going to throw custard pies at the end because it's the last

date of the tour and it's the last number of the show why wouldn't you throw custard pies it's rather unfair for Stevie so be so I got fuck it you know throw everyone's trying to custom pies including Stevie he's throwing custard pies and everyone'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 these 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 many things. but I'd like to start with a question about something that just came to me this morning. So 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. Just a musician playing music and loving it. And it's really very pure and sweet. And I thought, if I wondered, can you share a moment or a memory of just when you were playing music and kind of the machinery around? 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 for fun. While you're waiting to go on, stay sometimes. Sometimes I always have a piano in the room and guitar and stuff. And my room's always the quietest. Because I don't let people in like a load of friends and families. They can come in, but it's like then you have to leave.

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. So the thing about writing songs is because popular songs are really quite, they're obviously really short, which is due to the length of the 78 record creation.

And it's completely arbitrary reason that there are about three 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 three minutes, four minutes maximum, something like this. So it's not going to be that much. And it can be quite complex musically, but lyrically, how much lyrics are you going to really stick in. So musically, it's, 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 out and down, but I mean your mind is not really being serious. It's playful. Playful is a better word than fun. So you can be playful. And then, so if you're playful, you can just let your mind just go this way. And don't be worried if nothing happens, nothing happens.

Something will happen later or tomorrow. I was watching the video for In the Stars recently, which is the one where they use the Daging technology for you guys. And I actually thought it was sort of a, like 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 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, like, 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, like, I don't just mean physically,

but metaphysically, too. There's nothing good about it. Nothing. Wisdom? No. Nothing. You don't get wisdom. We 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 particularly pleasant. And, of course, you can't do things as quickly as you want to and all that sort of thing. And physically, physically you can't do things that you really. like to do, you've got to be, you have to be more careful. You can still do them, but you have to be more careful when you do them, you know, if you're either playing goalie in the football team

and you, you know, okay, you're going to go, 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. And this one is about sex. And I'm not going to... It's a big subject. It's a big subject. I'm not going to ask you for any detail.

So don't worry. It is sort of... So you have publicly been identified with sex for a long time. Like a sex symbol, you write songs that are heavily sexual. You know, like an avatar of sexiness. You know, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn. by saying you have... Sex, drugs and rock and roll were going into that.

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 him. But I don't really know. I really don't know the answer. I'd have to, you know, you're asking these questions. That's a really hard question. And I don't know 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. Could we? 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. The only thing I would say is that throughout your life, your attitude to sex changes and your sexual taste change in one's life.

sex is not a fixed point. So that's what I think obviously everybody's different. But I would like, I would say, and I'm not, this is not my sort of area of expertise, honestly, because we're into areas of human psychology's sexual drive. All this stuff is all pop psychology. People, everyone's read a bit about it, but do they know? know about it. But my observation is 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 may change, oh, or avenues might open up to you that you hadn't realized, or they, or you, or you might close avenues that have opened up because you don't like them or you tried something that you'd like for a couple of years and then you decide, oh, like that. 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 your, but that's a question of taste, but why is 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, 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're like sweet wine. Oh, that's like great. And then someone tells you, that's not really, you shouldn't be drinking that, you know, you should drink this.

And you try that and go, I really don't like that. I'll try it, you know. Like when we were really teenagers, when we were teenagers, we like rock music, but we, other, other more snobbish people say, you should listen to this jazz, you know? You should listen to jazz, you know, it's more intellectual, you know, than, so,

so 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 Disc, because it's a program where you choose records to take with you on your desert island,

and that's the only music you can have. And he says, but all I like is, like, to do Ron Ron, and he's an intellectual, so he says, they expect me to choose

Schenberg and Beethoven, and so he's an intellectual, so it's this thing of being an intellectual, so he's say, like, but, yeah, okay, play me that jazz music, you know, okay, Disney Gillespie, play me Disney,

You guys think of that. 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 modern jazz quartet in concert. I mean, it's expensive. Everyone's sitting down very seriously listening to you. No one was like Stanley Arc. You know. Talk about a rabbit hole. I asked you about sex. We ended up at the modern jazz.

asked for cards. How did 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, 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, 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 say. And so, you know, 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 years. But I think it's true that there is a Rolling Stones sound. And as a sort of a creative music. I can kind of argue against that in a way if I want to. What argument would you make? Well. I'm going to tell you, McGregor, you that you're wrong.

No, but I can take another position, you know. Okay. I mean, just for the sake of it, I could. Because if we're talking about musicality, that that's what you're best known for. You know, what the most people, if they are not particularly vaguely interested, but not very interested, 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 what I mean?

I 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 could point to his tears go by. I could point to Angie. Yeah. I mean, I could point to painted black. Even like under my thumb, there's someone played to me the other day. I mean, it's vocally, it's very me, but instrumentally and the way it's played, it's 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, 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 as well. You know, but I'm, there's, and there's not Elizabethan ones, but 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. It's a kind of rumba, you know, ballad rumba. I mean, it's, you know, it's like, I'm very light with an auto-saxophone lead. It's not really what you would expect. But 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. I 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 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 I, rhythmically speaking, there's so many different rhythms. And, yeah, I would like to pursue that. And maybe I could have, or should have pursued that more.

Because 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. there's a beautiful version you did of a 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 Irish, British and American folk tunes. Yeah, I mean, I've done that. And, I mean, the thing is that all the members of the band of Keith and Brian and to some extent, all like that music, Ronnie also. I mean, 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 other music, you know, by playing those songs, you know, I mean, Longback Vale 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 Chiefsons, 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, we were all very interested. We're all brought up to read border ballads, which are neither English nor Scottish or Irish.

but their 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 is continuing to trend that way. And I think that even if you think about, you know, like the busiest 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, 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 when I thought went, well, 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 be, you know, in a center of a mainstream music, I think, at this, any time. I mean, maybe in the 1970, it might have been, but now I wouldn't have thought so. But anyway, I mean, maybe there will be, maybe I'm wrong.

Do you have thoughts about the vitality 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 despite the fact that, you know, rock music 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 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 one of the strands of popular music like rock is like you know rap is like straight pop is like all these things we have all these strands in popular music that really 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 a marketable, when you have to market things, you want to tell people what they are. You know, so this is mint-flavored, okay? So everyone normally likes that, you know, So it's mint-flavored ice cream, it's mint-flavored this. So you put the genre of 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 to that.

They know what they're getting, you know. 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 there's a lot of music has a lot of history. and it shouldn't really be by intelligent people shouldn't be slicing it in little bits

and so I only like this bit, you know? I don't like folk music. What's that mean? It 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 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. I mean, I've doubt about it.

When I hear that, you know, I have doubt about it. I don't mind doing a tour. I mean, residencies are, if you can't do any shows and you can't go anywhere, then you have to do obviously you can't go, you've got to go to the, we 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 Stiles says he's doing residence,

but he's doing London and Amsterdam, you know, and so on and so. It is a tour. You know, it's not only London. Do you know what I mean? But do you think the Stones will do another, you know, world-spanning? I hope so. That's all I'm saying. hope so. I'm very pleased to be able to, I want to do it. I'm up for doing it. I like touring.

But the thing is, the only thing about doing residence is 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 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 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's a smaller country. 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. Maybe I have. That's true. Maybe it's happening.

I don't know. You never know. You could run by a bus outside of my house. You never really know, do? You know what's going to happen to you in life. but i mean i personally hoped to be able to tour again i i love touring i like going places

you know i like meeting people i like to go to i like to go to weird countries you know 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 heatwave it was so hot and i was out there and it was daytime didn't have many lights.

I think, what am I going to wear? And this guy reminded me of my show in Indonesia. And I said, yeah, I'd do a show in Indonesia. You know, 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. But what you were you to say? I remember doing it.

But when did you realize that some people thought the song was about you? Well, I would it be about me when I'm singing on it? No, it doesn't make sense, but 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 did. I never thought to ask. Yeah.

I never thought to. 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 knew, you know. And he was in London. He just phoned me up and said, can he can do the backing vocal? Because I love doing those sort of things, especially with, you know, if there's a female,

you're the male person. You know what I mean? It's slightly different doing it with men. But I don't care. So I just went along and did it. that was a great song, you know. And it was a big hit for her. And I was never credited to be the feature.

These days, it'd be the feature, you know, be Carly Simon featuring Mitch Jagger. 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.

Well, thank you for clear that up. We've now added to the 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 Louie, 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. 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 don't really listen to the line. So it's like, so Mick Jagger has a go at Elon Musk. Well, you're not listening to the line. You're only listening to Musk. That's what you hear.

Musk, he must be having a go at him. You know what, I do call him mad. And he's the one person you name on the whole album, no other person. His name check is, the only name check. It seems like it would have some importance. The funny thing is, when I wrote that, I was like, it was, I was thinking, 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, 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, Mughal, 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. And Mowgli. And Mowgli. Mowgli doesn't always go down well either.

No one likes a mogul. No one likes a mogul. 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 Stone song, which I think is also the best Rolling Stone song, is you can't always get what you want. Yeah.

And I think, 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 some times, you just might find you get what you need. and and what's 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 you got what you need to leads to a personal leads to a personal wish sure no i think i i i i can't recall one that stands out honestly Well, that's a good life, my friend. I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, obviously there's all kinds of things on daily life that everyone has frustrations.

I mean, I was very frustrated professionally for years that the Rolling Stones never made any new music. That was a huge frustration for me. Yeah. I mean, and and I solved it, you know? Yeah. 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 said, you know, I mean, it's like, okay. But, you know, it's like, that was a huge frustration that 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, and, and I, if, if you had interviewed me four years ago, I, I would.

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 even press conferences for hundreds of years. Yeah, really old. I think maybe he's connected to a Madison Square Garden concert in the late 60, something like that. And someone just asks, 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. There's just 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, so don't give me the pat answer in 2006. Where do you stand with those three things? My interest in philosophy is superficial. I mean, merely because I find a really hard subject. I mean, I really, I really, I really, find it difficult because I need a teacher. I can't just do it from reading. I can't. And when I was in college, I did some philosophy courses, and that's hundreds of years ago.

And I didn't really, I make one reference to the, to in the song, oh, in Jealous Lover, there's a Plato reference. Shadows on the wall? Yes, you got it. Well done. There you got it. So, yeah, but on my cave, that's even more obvious. 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, I've always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and they're always like disagreeing with their masters, what was, and then the master disagrees with, then the, I was reading this book on Kant, and he, so he has these people, I can't fit in his name, and then he writes a book, they're attacking his own master, and then Kant replies to him, you know, they're quite rude to each other, and then they have to make up later, and, and none of it I can understand what they're really talking about, you know, was Kant a Christian, or was he an atheist? I think it's cool that you're reading Kant.

Well, it's sort vaguely fashionable. Wait, but, so let's say Phil Zobbier'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. Mick, you know, this is going to be a corny way to end, but it's been a gas, gas, gas.

Oh, no, that's an awful day. It's terrible. That's Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stone's new album, Foreign Tongues, is available now. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash ad symbol The Interview Podcast.

This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orm. It was edited by John Wu, mixing by Sophia Landman. Original music by Marion Lazano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Seth Kelly, Paola Newdorf, Joe Bill Munoz, Eddie Costas, Amy Marino, Mark Zemmo, David Hur, Kathleen O'Brien, and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. I'm David Marquesi, and this is the interview from The New York Times.