Hindustan Times (Patna) - Hindustan Times (Patna) - Live
‘I DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT GRAMMYS’
At 75, Mick Jagger is still having fun. While new music figures in his plans... trophies, not so much
Mick Jagger likes a buzz. A natural buzz. The Rolling Stones frontman, who will tour America next spring with his iconic band, says that live shows give him a rush that can’t be matched, and that’s the reason that at 75, he still loves touring.
“Let’s face it, it is a huge buzz. Must be like playing football or something,” he says. Excerpts from an interview:
How’s the new music you’re writing coming along?
It’s going good. I’ve got lots of stuff. I’m doing some more writing this week. And I’m always, like, messing around. I enjoy the writing process a lot. I mean, you always think the last thing you wrote is really wonderful and sometimes they’re really not (laughs). But it’s really fun doing it.
You don’t even need to release [new] music because of the band’s catalogue...
Yeah, and we haven’t released that much and I think it’s a shame we haven’t released more new music. So, I would hope we’re going to release some music. We do have a huge catalogue. The thing about the catalogue is when we come up to doing a tour like this, I try and go back and find some stuff that we haven’t done ever or we haven’t done very much and try to mix it in, so it isn’t always the same show.
But when you’re playing a really big show, there’s a certain amount of songs people want to hear... and if you don’t do them, they’ll go, ‘Wish he’d done that one.’
Were you happy with the success of the band’s blues album, which won a Grammy this year?
That was good. We weren’t really setting out to do that. It just happened. It was a fun thing to do. It was... stuff we’d known for years since we were kids and played in, like, clubs. I really thought it was great and the response was really surprising. And I just hope we’re going to come up with some new stuff as well.
The Stones only have three Grammys, when other acts have 10 or 20. Does that bother you?
No, I don’t really care about Grammys very much. I’m not saying it’s not nice to have; it’s lovely to have. But it’s not going to break my heart if I don’t get Grammys and if my Grammys count is not as big as other people’s. But it’s very nice to get a Grammy. I appreciate it.
What do you remember about working with filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who died a couple days ago and directed you in 1970s Performance?
He was a wonderful filmmaker and I only worked with him that one time, and he was co-directing. He’s a wonderful cinematographer and did some great movies, and he was very quirky and all his films were very different, one to the other.
I’m sad he passed away, but I always remember working with him.
You’ve produced a lot lately, from TV shows to documentaries, but do you want to do more acting?
I just actually finished doing a cameo part in a movie which is kind of a twisted thriller, which is called The Burnt Orange Heresy. I just finished doing that in Italy... It’ll be out next year. It was only a small part, but fun to do.