Cover Story: Jagger Remembers

It's changed fantastically over the last 30 years. But so has everything else [laughs].

Is there anything more to say about "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" than has already been said on the record? Written sitting by a pool in Florida . . .

Keith didn't want it to come out as a single.

Is there anything special to you about that song, looking back at it after all these years?

People get very blase about their big hit. It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band. You always need one song. We weren't American, and America was a big thing, and we always wanted to make it here. It was very impressive the way that song and the popularity of the band became a worldwide thing. You know, we went to playing Singapore. The Beatles really opened all that up. But to do that you needed the song; otherwise you were just a picture in the newspaper, and you had these little hits.

Was "Satisfaction" a great, classic piece of work?

Well, it's a signature tune, really, rather than a great, classic painting, 'cause it's only like one thing -- a kind of signature that everyone knows.

Why? What are the ingredients?

It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times; which is very important in those kind of songs.

Which was?

Which was alienation. Or it's a bit more than that, maybe, but a kind of sexual alienation. Alienation's not quite the right word, but it's one word that would do.

Isn't that a stage of youth?

Yeah, it's being in your 20s, isn't it? Teenage guys can't often formulate this stuff -- when you're that young.

Who wrote "Satisfaction"?

Well, Keith wrote the lick. I think he had this lyric, "I can't get no satisfaction," which, actually, is a line in a Chuck Berry song called "30 Days."

Which is "I can't get no satisfaction"?

"I can't get no satisfaction from the judge."

Did you know that when you wrote it?

No, I didn't know it, but Keith might have heard it back then, because it's not any way an English person would express it. I'm not saying that he purposely nicked anything, but we played those records a lot.

So it just could have stuck in the back of your head.

Yeah, that was just one little line. And then I wrote the rest of it. There was no melody, really.

When you play it today, how do you feel about it? You've got to play it every night.

Well, I try to do it as well as I can, and I do the verse softer, so I give it some sort of dynamic. I try to make it melodic. Maybe we shouldn't really do it every night; I don't know.

"As Tears Go By" was your first big, classic ballad. Who wrote that?

I wrote the lyrics, and Keith wrote the melody. But in some rock, you know there's no melody until the singer starts to sing it. Sometimes there's a definite melody, but quite often it's your job as the singer to invent the melody. I start with one melody, and I make it another melody, over the same chord sequence.

You wrote it when you were 21. What do you think of it now?

It's a very melancholy song for a 21-year-old to write: "The evening of the day, watching children play . . . " It's very dumb and naive, but it's got a very sad sort of thing about it, almost like an older person might write. You know, it's like a metaphor for being old: You're watching children playing and realizing you're not a child. It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of doing it [initially] because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group. But Marianne Faithfull's version was already a big, proven hit song.

Why did you go and rerecord it? Because you had a particular affection for that song?

Well, it was already a hit, so, you know [laughs], and Andrew was a very simple, commercial kind of guy. A lot of this stuff is done for commercial reasons.

Were you surprised that something of this kind popped out of you at 21?

It was one of the first things I ever wrote. I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered and you just must let your imagination run.

You can't just experience something and leave it at that. You've got to try and embroider, like, any kind of writing. And that's the fun part of it. You have this one experience looking out of a window, seeing children. Well, you might not have felt anything, but then you just let your mind drift and dream, and you imagine an older person doing that. You put yourself in their point of view, and you start to write other things, and all this is a very subconscious thing. Out of that comes a mature thought, out of a young person.

I was reading Pushkin, and his stories are autobiographical. But not totally, because he was never in Siberia -- but his friends were, so he uses it. You use your own experience, and then you spice it up with your friends' observations and your imagination.

The next record was "Aftermath," which has "Paint It Black," "Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl." Does that stand out in your mind at all?

That was a big landmark record for me. It's the first time we wrote the whole record and finally laid to rest the ghost of having to do these very nice and interesting, no doubt, but still cover versions of old R&B songs -- which we didn't really feel we were doing justice, to be perfectly honest, particularly because we didn't have the maturity. Plus, everyone was doing it.

[Aftermath] has a very wide spectrum of music styles: "Paint It Black" was this kind of Turkish song; and there were also very bluesy things like "Goin' Home"; and I remember some sort of ballads on there. It had a lot of good songs, it had a lot of different styles, and it was very well recorded. So it was, to my mind, a real marker.

Why does "Under My Thumb" work so well?

It's got Brian playing these marimbas. That riff played on marimbas really makes it. Plus, the groove it gets in the end of the tune. It speeds up, actually. And it becomes this kind of groove tune at the end. It was never a single, but it was always a very well-known album track. And then it became a thing feminists fastened on.

Illegitimately, you think.

It's a bit of a jokey number, really. It's not really an anti-feminist song any more than any of the others.

It's more caricaturish than it is about real women.

Yes, it's a caricature, and it's in reply to a girl who was a very pushy woman.

Somebody specific?

No, I don't think so.

Also, on that same album you've got "Stupid Girl," which is a really nasty song.

Yeah, it's much nastier than "Under My Thumb."

What was going on in your life when you were writing songs like Stupid Girl"?

Obviously, I was having a bit of trouble. I wasn't in a good relationship. Or I was in too many bad relationships. I had so many girlfriends at that point. None of them seemed to care they weren't pleasing me very much. I was obviously in with the wrong group.

Your pain worked out well for the rest of us.

[Laughs] The pain I had to go through!

Then you did "Between the Buttons." What do you think of that album?

Frank Zappa used to say he really liked it. It's a good record, but it was unfortunately rather spoiled. We recorded it in London on four-track machines. We bounced it back to do overdubs so many times, we lost the sound of a lot of it.

Does that record mean a lot to you?

No. What's on it?

"Connection."

It's nice. "Connection" is really nice.

"Yesterday's Papers."

Yeah, the first song I ever wrote completely on my own for a Rolling Stones record. "My Obsession," that's a good one. They sounded so great, but then, later on, I was really disappointed with it. Isn't "Ruby Tuesday" on there or something? I don't think the rest of the songs are that brilliant. "Ruby Tuesday" is good. I think that's a wonderful song.

Why?

It's just a nice melody, really. And a lovely lyric. Neither of which I wrote, but I always enjoy singing it. But I agree with you about the rest of the songs. I don't think they're there. I don't think I thought they were very good at the time, either.

You then did "Their Satanic Majesties Request." What was going on here?

I probably started to take too many drugs.

What do you think about "Satanic Majesties" now?

Well, it's not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don't think any of the songs are very good. It's a bit like Between the Buttons. It's a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There's two good songs on it: "She's a Rainbow," which we didn't do on the last tour, although we almost did, and "2000 Light Years From Home," which we did do. The rest of them are nonsense.

I listened to it recently, and it sounds like Spinal Tap.

Really, I know.

Was it just you trying to be the Beatles?

I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it.

The whole thing, we were on acid. We were on acid doing the cover picture. I always remember doing that. It was like being at school, you know, sticking on the bits of colored paper and things. It was really silly. But we enjoyed it. [Laughs] Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck. Because he didn't understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him.

Just to force him out?

Yeah. Without actually doing it legally, we forced him out. I mean, he wanted out anyway. We were so out of our minds.

After it came out and it was kind of a chunk record, how did you consider it?

A phase. A passing fancy.

You followed up with "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

We did that one as a single, out of all the acid of Satanic Majesties.

What's that song about? "Born in a crossfire hurricane . . ."

It's about having a hard time and getting out. Just a metaphor for getting out of all the acid things.

And it did bring you back. You launch this golden era: "Beggars Banquet," "Let It Bleed," "Sticky Fingers," "Exile on Main Street."

Let's start with "Beggars Banquet," a record that you could not have predicted from your earlier work. It had extraordinary power and sophistication, with songs like "Street Fighting Man," "Salt of the Earth," "Stray Cat Blues" and "Jig-Saw Puzzle." What was going on in your life at this time? What were you listening to and reading?

God, what was I doing? Who was I living with? It was all recorded in London, and I was living in this rented house in Chester Square. I was living with Marianne Faithfull. Was I still? Yeah. And I was just writing a lot, reading a lot. I was educating myself. I was reading a lot of poetry, I was reading a lot of philosophy. I was out and about. I was very social, always hanging out with [art-gallery owner] Robert Fraser's group of people.

And I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 -- there was a good feeling in the air. It was a very creative period for everyone. There was a lot going on in the theater. Marianne was kind of involved with it, so I would go to the theater upstairs, hang out with the young directors of the time and the young filmmakers.

Let's start with "Sympathy for the Devil."

I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song. And you can see it in this movie Godard shot called Sympathy for the Devil [originally titled One Plus One], which is very fortuitous, because Godard wanted to do a film of us in the studio. I mean, it would never happen now, to get someone as interesting as Godard. And stuffy.

We just happened to be recording that song. We could have been recording "My Obsession." But it was "Sympathy for the Devil," and it became the track that we used.

You wrote that song.

Uh-huh.

So that's a wholly Mick Jagger song.

Uh-huh. I mean, Keith suggested that we do it in another rhythm, so that's how bands help you.

Were you trying to put out a specific philosophical message here? You know, you're singing, "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints" . . .