A ROCK GOD? NO, JUST A SILLY OLD PHONEY!
a top historian gives us his rather provocative view...
column spitting fire: part cobra, part brontosaurus.
Such razzle- dazzle could not disguise that the Stones had nothing new of substance to contribute. Instead, to Jagger’s chagrin, the sight of these old codgers playing the music of raw youth prompted much mockery and guffaws of ‘geriatric rock’, ‘ crock ’n’ roll’ and the like.
With the band nicknamed the ‘ Strolling Bones’, Jagger’s face was said to have more lines than t he cocaine - crazed Richards had snorted.
The singer said tetchily: ‘the chicks still dig me.’ Even as a wrinkly he retained an awesome ability to coax and caress audiences with his gutter glitz. But, rolling in riches, the Stones were increasingly remote from their fan base. Jagger, erstwhile effigy of rock rebellion, now deliberately cultivated his image as a man of wealth and taste.
HE BOUGHT expensive art and acquired watercolours painted by Prince Charles. He put his private j et at the disposal of guests and entertained in his French chateau, where games included a contest to see who could go furthest with a coin clenched between the buttocks.
Distant from his youthful radicalism, he took refuge in a hazy idealism, what Jerry Hall called ‘this Buddhist thing’. He sought enlightenment in Thailand and Laos, where he visited temples to chant and ‘meditate with monks’.
However, Jagger made sure the rigours of his spiritual quest were alleviated by fleshly nirvana. Usually accompanying him was his latest official mistress, a role he liked to fill with tall models, ranging from Carla Bruni in the Nineties to, more currently, the 6ft 3in L’Wren Scott.
His relations with Keith Richards continued to f l uctuate wildly. They could still collaborate, but they also had incandescent rows, not least when Jagger accepted a British knighthood i n 2002. Richards regarded this as a betrayal of everything the Stones stood for. Yet through it all, the band played on, bound together in pursuit of wealth. As ever, Jagger displayed phenomenal dynamism on the boards. Yet there was no denying that, his hearing i mpaired, his body gaunt and his face deeply grooved with age, he was participat- ing in the march of the dinosaurs. He was the incarnation of Jurassic rock. The erotic melodrama of the Sixties had now descended into tragic farce.