Hi, I'm Mick Jagger, and I'm feeling rather anxious about being Conan O'Brien's friend.
It's a heavy thing.
It is, and we're in an enclosed, very small space together.
Fall is here.
Hear the yell.
Back to school.
Ring the bell.
Brand new shoes walkin' loose, climb the fence, books and pens.
I can tell that we are gonna be friends.
Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.
Hey there.
Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
I'm not with the gang today.
No Sona, no Gorley, no Blay, no Eduardo.
I'm pretty much on my own.
Why, you ask?
Because I got a phone call, oh, just a couple of days ago.
And I'm in Los Angeles.
And the question was would you like to come to London to interview one of the most famous people in the world?
And I really thought about it.
It was a tough call because I have my Pilates class.
I take a Lamaze class, even though I don't know anyone who's pregnant.
I just go there and I've been asked to leave.
I have my yogurt regimen, but I said, no, I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna do it because this is the thrill of a lifetime.
So I jumped on a plane.
And I am now in London in a very small podcast studio that's off an alley.
And I'm excited because I'm talking to just a phenomenal force in my life and, i think, in many people's lifetime, and this is bucket list for me.
Now i'm going to reveal who it is.
Now, If Gorley were here or Sona did laugh and say no, it's.
The episode is marked with the person's name.
People already know you're being stupid, but I'm old fashioned.
And so I'm going to pretend you don't know. who I'm talking about.
My guest today is a rock and roll legend and cultural icon who has spent six decades as the front man of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, The Rolling Stones.
Their new album, Foreign Tongues, is out now.
I love this album and i think you have to check it out.
It's amazing.
This guy's amazing.
I'm absolutely honored that he is joining me today.
Mick jagger, welcome.
A couple of weeks ago I was traveling around the world shooting my travel show and I heard you were going to get a phone call from Mick Jagger.
Now, we had met briefly backstage at the Oscars, but we didn't really know each other.
Not at all.
The next thing.
I know you're calling me and we're having a chat about this event you asked me to do in Brooklyn to help launch.
It's the press launch of the new album Foreign Tongues.
And it was a great day for me because I'm a massive fan.
Of course I said yes.
I asked for money.
They said there's no money.
They said there's no money?
There was nothing.
There was no money.
That's terrible.
Yeah.
And I said, I'm just... I do apologize.
I thought they were paying hundreds of thousands for doing this.
Yeah, yeah.
It's my going rate.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I would have said, my going rate is... I was like Chuck Berry.
I wanted $100,000 in a briefcase before I went on.
And so it was a fantastic experience.
And I got to be with you, Keith, Ronnie.
Yes.
Now, I don't think I had met Ronnie before.
He's a lovely guy.
Yes, he is.
Tells a lot of very bad jokes.
Terrible jokes.
The only worst joke teller is Bill Wyman, who's not in the band anymore, but he could be co-opted to tell his terrible jokes versus Ronnie.
Ronnie versus Bill, they're terrible jokes.
Just awful.
And at one point, and it's, you know, it's Ronnie Wood.
He's a legend and a lovely guy.
A legendary comedian.
A legendary comedian.
But at one point I said, Ronnie, you've got to stop.
And I had known him an hour at that point.
But we had a lovely time.
And I had some observations about that day which is leading up to it.
You and I had several phone calls.
You were really going over all the details.
And then when we got to the event, at one point, you were looking out at the audience to check them.
And I looked back, I looked back at Keith and I said, was this Mick in 1962?
And he said, yes.
And this I get the sense that, in a way, you've always been the organizer, the manager, the guy who's keeping it together.
Is that a fair thing to say?
I guess so.
I mean, sometimes I was called a control freak, but I'm not a control freak.
I like to delegate.
You know, the thing about doing this kind of thing is you delegate these big jobs.
You know, I never organized that thing that we did.
Not really.
Yeah.
But what did I do?
I approved the place.
I thought that you would be a great person to do it.
And were you disappointed?
I was so happy.
It went off really well.
It was great.
It was very fun.
You handled Keith's microphone technique perfectly.
I was worried the minute they gave you guys handheld microphones at this event in Brooklyn.
You think well, that can get dodgy.
Yeah.
And then Keith did a thing where the microphone was by his mouth.
And when I'd ask him a question, he would start to answer.
And the microphone would drift away from his mouth until the point where I was still holding it.
This is not drifting away in the air on its own.
No, no, no.
He's holding it, but it's drifting.
His arm is drifting away from his body, but we got a laugh out of it.
It was fun.
He was lovely, but I did get the sense that.
Not that I didn't see control freak when I saw you, but I saw someone who is very interested in the details.
I mean just looking through to see.
Well, I'd seen the room empty, but you've got to see the room full.
What kind of people are there?
How many people are there?
What does the room feel like?
I think that's important.
I'm sure when you go on and do things with a live audience- you want to fill the room a little bit.
You do want to fill the room because how your behavior would be, how the audience is going to react.
I think all that stuff's really important.
What surprised me, very first time I met you, you mentioned the Oscars.
I don't know if you remember, but you came up behind me and I'm looking at my notes.
What do I have to do next?
We're halfway through the show.
And I feel someone jabbing me in the back saying, how's the crowd?
How's the crowd?
How's the crowd?
In kind of a funny American accent.
How's the crowd?
How's the crowd?
And I turn around, it's you.
And I said, Mick, you don't care how the crowd is.
You're Mick Jagger.
And you said, oh, I do.
Yeah.
Because...
Anyone else in the world who's not you would say, what's he worried about?
People are delighted to see you.
You're this.
Yeah.
You're not worried about it, but you want information because you're only on that.
You're on the whole show.
Good luck.
Good luck with that.
I mean, you know, that's a difficult job.
And you have to roll with the punches and there's all kinds of weird things happening at the Oscars.
People jump on stage and punch people.
Who knows what's going to happen?
I mean, I'm a presenter, which is the lowest category of people appearing on the Oscars.
And usually they read something off the teleprompter, which is just... not funny and it, and it's not interesting and they're obviously reading it and, and then they're, you know, it just isn't.
So I just rewrote all the stuff they asked me to say and and made.
I wanted to make it into something.
It was well, My words.
Organic to you.
Yeah, it's personal to me, you know.
Yeah.
So all these little things you do, you know, because the good thing about it was I'd done a rehearsal.
So you walk onto the stage and they hit the weird also weird.
They have the very famous people in cardboard cutouts.
Yes.
Remember that in the rehearsal?
Yes.
So there's, the timothy chalamet cutout he's just in front of you so i was going to make a bob dylan reference so i knew i knew that he was there because he's i'm staring at the cardboard cutout of him scarlett johansson's there whatever yeah whatever whatever So it was good to do the rehearsal, which was about five minutes.
And then I shared what was not a dressing room, was an office.
Didn't have any dressing room things with Neil Young.
Yeah. who wasn't on the show.
And then- He just hangs out in dressing rooms.
And I said, yeah, he's just hanging out.
And I go, that's Neil Young over in this office.
I said, hi, Neil.
And I realized Daryl Hanna was also a presenter.
Oh, there you go.
There you go.
That was the deal.
So Daryl Hanna-
Neil Young and I shared an office.
It's so funny how you've achieved this level.
That's hard to comprehend, where I would think you can be very much in control of what you want to do and how you want to do it.
Whenever I see footage of the early stone shows, when you've really guys have hit and you're in Denmark, you're trying to perform.
Kids are running up on stage and you're singing and people are jumping on your back.
Yeah.
Girls are jumping on you.
And so half of your time is spent getting out of a headlock.
Yeah.
While singing.
Yeah, while singing.
And dancing.
And dancing.
All at the same time.
Yeah.
Those are the days.
Do those moments occur to you now, every now and then?
Because things are so locked down now in a great way.
Yeah.
But those early days were just so chaotic.
It was chaotic.
There was no... See, the thing was in those days, there wasn't any organization for these concerts.
And the organization was minimal.
There was no really security.
So if there was security, it was the local police.
And the local police... had no experience of a concert audience.
They'd probably never done it before.
And in some places, like we used to play in the West Coast, in little places, and the police would come out and there would be like 14-year-old girls and they'd bang them on the heads with their nightsticks.
That was their solution.
It's like, huh?
We took care of it.
This could be your daughters.
Yeah.
Maybe they are.
And it was the same in Europe.
I mean, they would just throw them out of the door bodily.
I mean, it was just chaotic.
The other thing that strikes me, which has changed so much, not to embarrass you, but you reach this iconic level where you're, if someone were to make a short list of who are the greatest entertainers of the 20th, early 21st century, you know, and I'm including everybody, you're an Al Jolson, you know Michael Jackson.
You're on the very, very short list of this iconic performer.
I want to see Al Jolson and Michael Jackson as a duo.
Al Jolson, like, and then moonwalks right past him.
Exactly.
That's a good one.
But, you know, you're in this position and...
The press.
I don't think people today understand how hostile the media was towards all pop groups.
But then specifically they just decided and it was kind of a press creation Rolling Stone.
They're bad, they're punks before punks.
They were bad.
Rolling Stones bad, dirty, Rolling Stones, you know, scary, shouldn't be allowed.
And yeah, that's just some press stuff.
But people were actually.
Obviously people were really welcoming in most places, but there was a group that were really not welcoming.
But maybe they didn't even know who you were, but they would just shout names at you.
They didn't know who you were.
They would just shout names.
So it was very polarized, in a kind of modern way, just the look of you which, when you look at the pictures, is pretty normal.
It's tame now.
Very tame.
But... But in those days it wasn't.
So it's hard to... That's why it's so hard to imagine because...
We look pretty normal and you know, and but not for those people that you know, especially in the US, when we first went there, let's say, 64 in the in the outside of New York and LA, that that, that was, that was they.
We were like freaks for them.
Yeah.
It was also... I was always careful in my comedy career.
A new band would come up or a new performer who looked strange and my writers would say let's make fun of that person.
I would say, I do not want to be...
Because this footage doesn't age well.
If this person goes on to be iconic and this is when bands were coming on my show for the first time their first TV experience would be a No Doubt or a Green Day.
And I'm glad that I was welcoming and didn't make any jokes because they would look so stupid now.
In the 1960s, all performers decided that these long haired freaks from England were a passing fad.
They had no conception that this was going to be the music that dominated people's lives for the next 60 years.
They didn't know.
Well, no one knew that.
No one knew that.
And so it was easy for them to be patronizing and to make a joke of it, because it's an easy, cheap gag.
You know yeah, I mean Dean Martin did it.
You know famously, Ed Sullivan, we went on a lot, he didn't do it, Ed Sullivan didn't do anything really.
That was a different kind of person.
I think Ed Sullivan knew that he got good ratings because when the Beatles went on Ed Sullivan whatever Ed Sullivan thought of the Beatles that he got great ratings when they went on
So he knew what you're saying.
There's no point in me making fun of them because who knows what's going to happen.
But I mean, there were a lot of exceptions.
There were talk show.
People say maybe local.
I can't remember all their names now, like Mike Wallace.
They were willing to have serious conversations with you.
They respected you a bit more.
There were others that did not.
And you didn't do their shows, so...
Yeah, it's just interesting now I think.
I don't think people today understand not that they should, but the environment that you guys were in in 64 65 66, actually all through most of the 60s.
Yeah, it was a hostile environment, particularly in America.
I'm not only America.
I'm not blaming America for being that only.
They were hostile in England.
There was a lot of hostility.
But America was not really ready for this stuff, really they weren't, you know, and obviously things change.
I mean it didn't take long when you think about it in years, like you said, 64 by 66, it was changed a lot, you know.
So two or three years it changed.
There are a lot of singers or entertainers that get to this point in their career and they get very nostalgic.
And they start singing or writing a lot about their childhood or looking back.
And what I find interesting is... you do not strike me as a nostalgic writer.
You're very interested in what's happening right now.
And I say that in a very positive way.
When I listen to Foreign Tongues, There's no really looking back.
This is music that you made for someone to listen to in 2000, 26, 27.
And there's no leaning on this vast history that you have.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
It's true.
That's not really, I don't really do that.
I mean, I'm quite happy to talk about, like we just talked about, you know, the early days of going to the United States or going to Holland or Denmark or whatever we talked about.
I'm quite happy to remember that if I can.
It's hard.
It's so long ago.
It's hard to really remember.
But no, I mean, I'm not drawing In this Foreign Tongues album lyrically, I'm not drawing on nostalgia at all.
I mean, obviously you're drawing on past experiences, but there might be recent past experiences.
There could be any, but they're not referred back.
And, musically speaking, every time Andy Watt, the producer, would make a, produces all these references, which is outstanding, because you go like this is a bit like this song you did previously to explain to the musicians the relatability to this song.
It's a bit think of it a bit like this, you know, and then that's fine.
But then I said to Andy but yeah, but don't don't make references musically, don't?
There was one track, I think, Mr Charm.
And at the end of it, he said, it could be a bit more like Jumping Jack Flash at the end.
I said, no, it's not anything like that.
And I don't want you to refer to it.
And we didn't have an argument about it.
So I said, just...
Don't make it like that.
We're not going to encourage anyone to overdub guitars like that.
And so I didn't want any references to that, if you know what I mean.
And I've heard that Paul McCartney's record has some of this that you're talking about.
I haven't yet got round to listening to it.
I apologize, Paul.
I will do because it's been talked about a lot and i've heard it's very good, but i haven't listened to it yet.
So um now, in the old days, would you have gotten a track by the beatles or a competitor right away and listen to it?
Listen to that record you could?
Yeah, probably.
You're beyond all that now.
Well, I mean, I just, I'm not beyond it.
I just keep forgetting.
I've been so busy.
I just keep forgetting to listen to it.
Yeah.
I've been running around doing promotion and I just haven't been listening to current music very much.
I could sing it to you.
Yeah, okay.
I'm ready.
How's it go?
What's the lead track?
What's it called?
What's it called?
Do you remember what it's called?
What's the lead track?
I don't remember.
Oh, God.
Come on.
No, he's, what is it?
Dungeon Alley?
I've heard this.
I've heard the title.
Yeah.
What does that refer to?
I think it's a street in Liverpool that was like an alley that led down to.
So he's singing about Liverpool.
He's looking back.
So on Honey Diamonds on the track called Whole Wide World.
I did refer back a little bit to student digs days and everything.
But it was a pretty oblique reference, but it was there.
There was two lines about it.
Listening to the album, you mentioned Mr. Charm, so I'm going to bring this up.
I don't think any singer does attitude better than you.
It's so interesting because I will do another reference.
But in Mr Charm I get some of the This is not a reference, but some of the delicious kind of almost oily disdain that you can hear in like Symphony for the Devil.
There's a little bit of.
There's this great attitude and you do it in.
I'm a big fan of the show Slow Horses.
You do the theme song.
Yeah.
I love... the attitude that you possess and inhabit when you're singing that song.
Which one?
Mr. Charm?
Well, Mr. Charm, but also- The slow horses theme.
The slow horses theme.
Yeah, which is, you know, it's very kind of almost burlesque.
It's called Strange Game.
Strange Game, yeah.
I think I saw you once said in an interview that yes, the lyrics are important, but really it's the sound.
Yeah.
And you have this...
I can tell you think a lot about what is this going to sound like, because some very strange things in like doo-wop music sounded great, but when you look at what it says It's rubbish.
It's just absolute rubbish, and it's the sound.
And I think of so many Stones records and so many of your vocalizations, as it's a great shattered And on this record there's a great attitude and a sound to what you are singing that I think, adds a lot.
To the lyrics.
I think in attitudes though, you know, it's like, it's acting really.
Cause you, you, you're, you're taking on the character of the, of the song, you know?
And when you do a love song, say like back in your life or the jilted lover, you're playing the jilted lover.
Obviously, that's happened to you before, but that's a whole different attitude.
It's a different person.
It's easier in the recording studio because you don't have to do them one after another.
And on stage, you'd have to switch personas quickly.
You go from symphony of Daryl to a ballad, whatever, but you don't do that.
You almost want a screen to come down for a second so you can inhabit a new person.
Yeah, you want to inhabit another space.
So when you get into a song in the studios, but remember you haven't done that song that many times.
Yeah, you know you've might've done a demo of it in that case.
In this case of Mr Charm, I did a demo.
So I, I wasn't like walking into doing a song that I didn't know.
Um, I knew it, but I had to make it much better than the demo, you know, and I rewrote the lyrics and everything.
And then you, you start to get into the character of this.
Uh And, like in that song, there's two attitudes.
So there's the verse attitude where you're kind of trying to be beguiling.
And then there's the chorus attitude, where you're kind of throwing something else away, you know, saying life's too short, just make money and whatnot.
It's a slightly different attitude.
Then you come back to the verse, where you're then throwing these scattered gun images out in what you hope is an interesting way.
I listened to this album.
I listened to it a bunch because I really like it.
And I noticed that.
Yes, I can see.
Obviously you guys famously started as a blues band, but there's blues in here.
There's rock and roll.
There's also jazz.
Again, I think you've always been interested in many different genres of kind of music.
And I was very interested in the country aspect of it, of the album, because I know that if I didn't know any better, I think well, country couldn't have been an influence, but it was an influence.
Country was a huge influence on, well, I think on every, uh, most English musicians of that period.
Don't forget, a lot of these country songs were big hits.
They were like top 10 hits as they were in the US.
But people like Eddie Arnold and all these people, they had huge hits.
They were pop hits, even though they were country songs.
And then you got onto people like George Jones and they were played on the radio.
So this wasn't obscure.
The blues was more obscure.
These were hits.
The Everly Brothers were country.
Yeah.
I mean, really?
I mean, they were pop, but they're still country.
And Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash had a number one record with Ballad of a Teenage Queen.
So as soon as you heard that and you liked Johnny Cash, you would explore more Johnny Cash and you'd realize that he was a country singer.
This is what you realize when you listen to 1954 Elvis Sun Session.
It's a click and a half away from country.
It's rockabilly.
Yeah.
But if you slowed it down a little bit, the instrumentation, it's so close to country.
So close, but he was covering rhythm and blues songs a lot of times.
Yeah.
I mean, of course, he did standards like Blue Moon in the same period we're talking about.
Obviously, these songs like That's All Right Mama, which is, I think, the first one he did.
He did the first one, yeah.
And that was an R&B song.
And then he did Hound Dog.
That was an R&B song.
These are all R&B songs.
So even though we say yeah, he's so country, he was covering RB in a kind of slightly different country way.
I'm not sure.
I'm not a great Elvis student, but I mean, I love Elvis and all that, but...
Did he really do country music as we know it?
No, probably more, well, gospel.
He loved gospel.
Yes, gospel he did.
Loved gospel, but you can see that, you're right, those early influences, I think it's a gumbo.
Country is part of his makeup, but much more so gospel, rhythm and blues.
Yes.
You never met Elvis?
Did you meet Elvis?
No, I never met Elvis.
That's incredible to me.
You know why?
I'll tell you why.
The Daily Mirror, an English tabloid that still exists.
You always did publicity with the Daily Mirror and the Beatles did it.
There was a showbiz journalist, I can't remember his name, very famous at the time.
And he took the Beatles in Los Angeles to visit with Elvis.
Yeah.
And there's pictures of this.
Yeah.
So they went up to Elvis' house and his pool.
Mm-hmm.
And they walked in and he was playing bass, watching TV, playing bass, but they were all high.
The Beatles were high and they, none of them have their story straight.
None of them can remember.
They don't remember anything.
I remember John telling me, You know, you should never meet your heroes.
I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you.
That's fascinating, yeah.
And so I didn't.
I took John's advice.
Yeah.
It was really stupid of me, really.
But I would love to have met Elvis.
Why take John's advice?
But I mean at the time it seemed to ring well.
That means- No no, he famously in the 64 tour he kept saying the minute they got to America John kept saying where's Elvis?
Where's Elvis?
Where's Elvis?
That's the only person he wanted to meet.
Then they met Elvis in Bel Air at his house.
Yeah.
John walked out and said, where's Elvis?
Because that was not the guy he wanted to meet.
Yeah.
He disappointed him.
Yeah.
And he told me all this story more than once.
Yeah.
And so it sort of put me off.
So I wanted to keep my Elvis to myself, my version of Elvis.
And so I didn't want my version of Elvis shattered like John's was.
But maybe my Elvis version would have been different.
Well, I have to tell you, I've always wanted to sit and talk with you, and this is a massive disappointment.
Yeah, I can imagine it is.
Here we are, stuck in this little tiny room in West London.
I'm going to leave and go, where's Mick Jagger?
Yeah, and I was enjoying being in Casablanca.
This is crap.
I did have a good time in Casablanca.
And you know there's something about this album Foreign Tongues.
I was thinking you're not nostalgic.
I can feel an urgency.
There's a sense that you guys got into the studio.
I know you made it very quickly.
And what I'm very impressed by is it almost feels like you've got something to prove which you don't.
But that's how it feels.
A lot of these songs really feel like you're having a great time, but let's get this shit and get it right.
Is that fair?
Yeah, it's fair.
I mean, that's how modus operandi for me when we did Hackney Diamonds, it was a way of working.
So the previous way the bands obviously had a lot of ways of working in a studio and And when we did Hanging Diamonds that was a different way of doing it.
It's like, okay, we've got these songs.
We got them prepped a bit.
At least they're done.
We're not writing songs in the studio, which a lot of bands do.
We used to do.
If something comes up in the studio, fantastic.
And this song may change completely and utterly, but you have an idea and we're going to plow through them.
We're not going to hang around.
We're not going to wait.
We're not going to play them all day.
We're going to do them for a couple of hours, and then we'll move on to the next one.
And if...
We'll come back the next day and might do it again, or might leave and come back next week and do it again.
So we're always moving ahead, always plowing ahead.
So there's no time for too much self-analysis of...
Whether it's the songs any good, whether the performance is any good.
We'll find out because when it's all finished, we'll listen to them, all you know, and say what have we got after we've done four weeks?
What have we got left?
Well, what's good?
Which are your favorites?
Which ones?
Is there one you don't like?
Does this all stand up?
Because we want to set the bar high.
Sure.
Because we don't want to have any filler.
We want to set the bar high so every track has to have something special about it.
Okay, some might be your favorites, but that doesn't mean to say that the other ones don't have something to say.
Well, Rough and Twisted, I love.
In the Stars, obviously you guys knew we've got something really great here.
Yeah.
Love the video.
Yeah, that's crazy.
In the Stars is fantastic.
You guys sort of re-imagined as your younger selves and it's great.
It's fantastic.
It was only AI with the faces.
Everything else is real.
And you told me that at one point they got a little screwed up because you thought Ronnie Wood doesn't look right.
Young you looks great.
Young Keith looks great.
They tried to make a Faces era Ronnie Wood.
I said to, we were talking with the lady that I'm working with on the video.
So they're doing this AI.
And I said, stop it at 3.18.
I was talking to her.
We're on Zoom.
I said, stop it at 3.18.
I said, that's Jeff Beck.
Ronnie, that's not your guy.
Your guy, he's referring to Jeff.
AI makes mistakes.
The thing was that Ronnie was in a band with Jeff Beck.
So they might have gone back to this footage and said, please don't bother me about this.
I know exactly who these people are.
And it looked exactly like Jeff Beck.
So we had Jeff Beck in the band for a minute there.
That was interesting.
So I said, now you've got to change it to Ronnie.
Because the Keith and I images were taken from Sympathy for the Devil.
Mostly.
It's not quite that simple.
Was it Godard who made the, he made a movie?
Of course, someone famous, a famous French film director.
Yeah, a French film director.
And I know at the time you were thinking why is he shooting us?
Creating, and now it's a great document.
Yeah, it's the only one like that.
It's the only one that exists from the 60s.
You know what's another great piece of footage is there's this great footage of you and Keith.
You've just come back from recording in Muscle Shoals.
You go into a room.
I'm sure you've seen this.
You walk into a room and you've got the demo for, I think it's Brown Sugar.
Yeah.
You put it on. and you're listening to it.
It's not out yet, but you're listening to it and you see, you start to both of you start to groove to this thing and you start strutting around the room and you have the same reaction that later on everybody's gonna have, which is this is a great track.
But it's you guys hearing it for the first time.
Yeah.
You're hearing the rough mix or something.
Yeah.
Is that in Gimme Shelter by the Maisel Brothers?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It's great.
It's just a great moment.
You as a fan of the Rolling Stones.
Yeah, I can be that.
Yeah.
I can also be their severest critic.
Is that true?
Well...
You kind of have to be sometimes.
And sometimes you're wrong.
You can be very wrong because you're not a very good critic of your own work.
One is not a good critic of one's own work, really.
But you are the first person that hears it, after all, in reality.
I have to ask you, I mentioned this when we talked in Brooklyn, but I have to bring it up.
Your voice sounds as good as ever.
There are times where I think it's better than ever.
It defies logic, but I know that you are an extremely disciplined guy about your health and taking care of yourself.
But you listen to this album and I think this is a 28-year-old singer.
It's really amazing.
That's very kind of you to say that.
And you're doing falsetto stuff on foreign tongues?
That's pretty easy.
I find that car easy.
That's not, I mean, people have given me lots of compliments about that.
And, to be honest, that's the and I appreciate the kindness, but that that some of the other songs are much more difficult than that.
That one's relatively easy to do.
I learnt falsetto singing very early on in Stone's career when I listened to Don Covey.
He was a soul singer and he was singing this song called Have Mercy.
Don Covey also wrote Chain of Fools for Aretha Franklin.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was a songwriter as well.
And I met him a few occasions.
Anyway, but on his song, Have Mercy, he sings only in falsetto.
So then I copied that and we covered that song.
I mean, I'm sure my version is useless compared to her.
I was practicing falsetto.
But that kind of falsetto singing is relatively easy because you never change from falsetto back into your regular voice.
That's the difficult thing to do.
The difficult thing is going in and out of falsetto.
So I can't really do that very well.
Like the person that does that brilliantly is Al Green.
Yeah, so if you listen to Al Green and I was last month I was I put on this Al Green record and I hadn't heard it for a while and I said I was analysing what he was doing with his vocal and he was.
So he's going falsetto.
And then he's going back in the same line, he's going back to his regular voice and then he's going back falsetto.
And I said Okay, I see.
So I've got to do that too.
I have to learn how to do that.
And so I just sang along with Al Green trying to do it.
I mean, it's not easy, but it's possible.
I learned this a long time ago, which is very few people, sort of in your caliber, but I remembered once getting to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform.
Then I got taken backstage because my drummer for years, Max Weinberg is Bruce's drummer.
He took me backstage and I got to hang out with Bruce a little bit just after the show.
He at one point had been singing this falsetto and I said, that was great.
I love that part and I didn't realize you could do that.
And he said yeah, I'm really working on it and I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.
And I thought, this is fascinating.
I see the same thing with you.
Everyone else would assume that you've got nothing left to try, but of course you do.
Those are things you can do.
And you are still thinking yeah, I'm going to listen to this Al Green record and okay, what's he doing here?
And I want to work on that.
Yeah, because I haven't mastered that.
So in the studio, so I do like a song like Jealous Lover.
Yeah, yeah.
So I can sing the falsetto part in the verse first, and then the chorus is in full voice and then layer it with lots of harmonies.
That I did in falsetto and full voice, but then I'm not really doing the Al Green thing.
I'm doing one set in falsetto and one set in full voice.
It's not cheating.
That's just the way I laid it.
I do think there's something about, we all have our heroes.
It's your attempt to be your hero that fails, and in the failing of being exactly like the person you idolize, you create something that's yours.
Something new comes out.
Yeah, and I think- Because you can't be that.
You guys were listening to blues and saying, we want to do that.
And it's, of course, it's different.
You're from Dartford.
Yeah, exactly.
It's going to be different.
I can't be Howlin' Wolf, you know?
Yeah.
But you do, I've never tried to sound like Howlin' Wolf.
Nobody sounds like Howlin' Wolf.
Not even...
I've never heard anyone.
But yeah, you're absolutely right.
While you're copying people, you create something new.
You know, we were talking about how so much has changed.
One of the things that this first wave of pop stars in the 60s faced was well, you can't be doing this when you're not in your 20s.
Once you're 28, 29, this is for young kids to do.
You can't be doing this.
There's a great clip I saw It's backstage.
It might be Madison Square Garden.
I think it's late 60s.
Dick Cavett's talking to you.
And he said, do you think you'll be doing this when you're 60?
And he said, and you have a cane?
And you said, sure.
You said a lot of...
You said Marlene Dietrich is still out there and she's amazing.
And I thought that's such a great answer, because I think the standard answer then was well, of course not, of course not.
But you said, why not?
Yeah.
Why not?
Well, you know there had been.
I mean see, the thing about rock music is it's always associated with youth.
It was the music of rebellious youth, so to speak.
And I mean, most rock bands are young and you want there to be young rock bands and you know sort of comes and goes and there's been a slight revival of it now.
But you thought that once you're out of the flush of youth, you wouldn't continue.
But rock music kind of evolved, I suppose, in a way as well.
And it also remained the popular music with the same group of people that were in your same age group.
They still liked it.
Yeah.
They didn't move on to some other music.
They might have moved on, but they still kept a thing for their youth.
Yeah, I don't know.
Frank Sinatra was still a big star when he was older, but it's a different kind of music.
You don't need quite as much energy To do Frank Sinatra's, you need to do the Sex Pistols.
I mean, or the Ramones.
Or to do Hit Me in the Head.
What I think I mean I can't.
I'm hard pressed to think of anybody who expends more energy on stage still.
As you, you're in constant motion.
I couldn't do that.
I couldn't do that for 15 minutes, let alone a two hour plus show.
So, you know, the stamina that you have, I know you work at it.
I'm wondering does any of that come from the fact that your dad was a gymnast and a physical fitness guy?
Did you think that you grew up a little bit with that?
Like I got to take care of myself.
Yeah.
He kept telling me, you have to take care of yourself.
You know, if you don't take care of yourself you're going to be any point at someone like who was 55 or fat and smoking in an armchair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You'd be like your uncle so-and-so.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, you don't want to be like that.
I was like, no, no I don't.
But it goes in, you know, when you're young.
That sticks with you.
So, yeah.
I would have been, I don't know, 12 years old, I think, when Elvis turned 40.
And the National Enquirer was just vicious about Elvis turning 40 because he was the real first wave of rock and roll.
Yeah, absolutely.
So he's, you know...
He's another generation older than you guys and he was the first one to get.
Isn't this absurd that this man is still doing this at 40?
Yeah.
Which now nobody wasn't in very good shape.
No, he was.
That was the thing.
I mean, and then he got back in shape.
He did a great comeback thing where he looked amazing.
But for a while why he was such a figure of fun.
I'm not saying the National Enquirer is the paper of record.
But why everyone used to take the mick out of him was because he did get overweight.
And he obviously wasn't very fit.
And he wasn't very old.
I mean, this is all.
And how old was he when he died?
He was 42.
Yeah, you know. which now we would consider quite young for a singer.
Well, this is how screwed up things are.
I was in high school, when I would have been 17, 16 or 17, when my sister, Kate knocked on the door and she opened the door.
It was in the morning in 1980, and she told me John Lennon was shot and died.
And I was lying in bed and I said, what?
And she said, yes.
And I said, how old was he?
And she said, 40.
And I said, well, at least he had a long life.
That's what I said.
Now I am 63 now.
I don't think 40 is a long life.
I don't think 63 is a long life, but that was my perspective then.
Yeah, of course.
Just insane.
Yeah, well, today, I know this is not going out until later, but David Hockney just died.
Yeah.
And he was creating experimental art.
He was 87 years old and he never stopped.
Never stopped.
He never stopped.
Not just repeating himself.
He didn't repeat himself.
That was the great thing.
He just carried on, you know, trying different things and trying different ways of expressing himself.
Foreign Tongues album, is that you?
I mean, he was amazing.
And 87, I mean, he was still painting this year.
I have to ask you, is the harmonica that I hear on the Foreign Tongues album, is that you?
Yeah.
It's, okay.
Ronnie plays the harmonica, but he doesn't play on this album.
Well, also, there's a great quote, a Keith quote.
Keith is a huge admirer of your harmonica playing, and he said that is...
That's the, you know, there are many, Mick can assume many forms.
That is, he always felt your harmonica playing was the key into that's the core Mick Jagger.
That's the Apple logo that comes up when you've turned on the computer for the first time.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you think that's close to something true?
It's kind of true, but the thing is, I think, in a funny way, the harmonica is an extension of the voice, you know, because it's a blown instrument and you're making a wah wah.
You know, it's a voice extension thing.
So I think for a vocalist it's a good extension of a voice, you know so a natural instrument of a voice.
Of course, what I like doing is playing punk guitar.
So that's what I really like doing.
Do you ever do open tunings?
I do both, yeah.
But when I do the slashy indie guitars, it's sort of six strings.
And Ronnie and Keith always sort of look at me.
But I do it anyway.
They don't want you on the guitar.
I don't think so.
But they've sort of learned to put up with it.
Yeah.
They've learned to put up with it.
And, you know, I love doing it because I know it's harder than that.
You know, it's like this, you know, because on some of these fast songs, it's like, you know, like hit me in the head and all that.
That's it's really slamming.
You know, you have to really slam it.
I'm not saying Ron and Keith don't slam it because they do.
But when I've written something like that, I always want to be on it.
I always want to be playing guitar on it.
I love playing harmonica too.
The harmonica thing was great on the Amy Winehouse song because I played the harmonica.
The horn parts on the Amy original I played on harmonica, which is a horn part.
I played that on harmonica.
That was a good opportunity.
Do you write exclusively on guitar or do you also sit at the piano and write?
I do piano and guitar.
Piano and guitar.
Piano and guitar.
Sometimes I just sing to drum machines.
Just anything.
No instrument.
Just me singing.
Do you find that you've got to do it early in the morning?
No, I hate doing things early in the morning.
I think early in the morning is breakfast and read the newspaper.
That's it.
Many people have been asking, is there going to be a tour for Foreign Tongues?
Yes.
I selfishly would want that, because I want to hear these songs live and I know you're going to get me a ticket.
You guys are saying probably not right away, but what do you think?
Do you think it'll be maybe in a year?
Is it possible or it's hard to say?
It's possible.
I think I'd love to do it too, because I think there's a lot of songs on this album that would translate into live really good.
But having said that, you can't really do that many new songs if you do stadium shows.
The audience is not that accepting of them.
You know, they want to hear what they're familiar with.
Can you clock that when you're trying something new and you see people head for the bathroom?
You can't, yeah.
You do.
You'll get used to it.
Yeah.
You'll like it.
Honestly, you'll like it.
Yeah.
But you must have felt that when you were singing some of I mean, there were many times in your life where you were singing new tracks.
Of course.
But no one.
You know, Led Zeppelin had to play Stairway to the Heaven for the first time at one point on Long Island.
And people were like, what is this shit?
Yeah, right.
It's always the first time.
Then yeah, the more confident you get, the more you just we're doing it, you know, but there's still a limit to how many you can do out percentage wise.
So you can see someone headed to the bathroom.
Sometimes I can.
I don't concentrate on that.
I would only concentrate on it.
When someone I'm talking and people are heading to the bathroom, it's all I can think about.
And it's, they often, that's when they use the bathroom is when I start talking.
I heard you talk about David Bowie once.
I think it was when we were having dinner and you were talking about David Bowie at one point and you said an interesting thing, which is we were competitive, but we were also good friends.
That's a very hard thing to maintain, but I think you guys did that beautifully.
Yeah, we were competitive.
David was so competitive.
I was made competitive by David.
How so?
Well, he was just so competitive that I had to be competitive back, you know?
But he would do, I mean...
I mean, he went through a period.
David went through all these different iterations of David.
There isn't one David Bowie.
There's kind of like a slowly evolving David Bowie.
There's jump cuts to another David Bowie.
Yeah.
Another style.
Then he's the thin white duke.
Yeah.
When he was doing like Gene Genie, he was very stonesy, you know?
Yes.
That was very stonesy period.
And so he would come over and play me Gene Genie, you know?
I've got it.
Want to listen?
Yeah, of course.
I said, God, he nicked all my things.
Yeah, I know, man.
I know.
But it's like a homage to you.
It's homage, yeah, sure.
It's homage.
Yeah, yeah.
But, yeah, we're competitive.
I think John and I were very competitive, too.
John Lennon.
But we're more competitive in being sarcastic.
Yes.
The verbal competitiveness.
Have you ever seen the video of him and Bob Dylan in the back of the limo?
Yes.
I love that.
I love that because Bob Dylan is not in good shape.
They're in the back of a Rolls Royce.
They're driving around London.
I think in 65, John's got that acid wit where he's saying, come, come, boy, come, come.
Do you suffer from scraggly forehead?
He turns it into an aspirin ad because Bob Dylan can't.
Can't pull it together.
No.
That's very much like John.
Did you guys get along?
Yeah, we really got along.
But, I mean, that was John at his most, you know, he's being very sarcastic with Bob.
Yeah.
You know, and Bob's not really coming back with the zingy answers.
No.
No, he's impaired and he's not, yeah, he's not.
But it does give you a good illustration because most of the other things you see of John are kind of like short and that's kind of extended sarcasm.
Yes.
So that was him all the time?
Not all the time.
He could be sweet?
Of course.
He could be lovely.
Yeah.
But you know he's one of these people that if you say something stupid he'd pick you up, you know.
He'd clock it right away.
He'd clock it right away, you know.
Yeah, but he was very competitive about it.
He wasn't competitive about anything else.
You mean just, you think he was most competitive about being funny?
Yeah.
Being funny and sarcastic.
Yes.
More so than music.
It's a kind of Liverpool thing, I think.
Sure.
I think.
Maybe I'm stereotyping, but I think it is.
You guys have been great at tour promotion.
I don't know what you might do for the next tour.
One of the greatest things you ever did was all get on the back of a flatbed truck and drive down Fifth Avenue singing, I believe, Brown Sugar.
Something like that.
Yeah, and I'm thinking, that takes nerve to drive through New York in traffic.
And all the press was told you were going to be in this restaurant.
And then they hear music and they come running out of the restaurant with their pads and their cameras.
And you guys are on the back of a truck going by.
That's it.
Which was fantastic.
I don't know if people do things like that anymore.
They don't really.
Um Apparently, Charlie told me that was a thing that jazz bands did in New York to promote their gigs.
I think.
In Harlem, I think.
They would get on the back of a truck.
I think that's where we got it from.
I think it might have been Charlie's idea.
Yeah.
Because that was a thing that happened in Harlem.
And I know...
You mentioned Charlie.
You use a track of Charlie's in Foreign Tongues.
It's amazing.
I know you guys are also readily identifiable by your sounds.
It's very hard to do on drums. but you always know it's Charlie.
Yeah.
It's really incredible.
Yeah.
And he's got two sticks and a drum kit that he doesn't have some Keith Moon crazy kit with a thousand.
He's got a standard kit.
You always know it's him.
Yeah.
And the funny thing is, on this track, which is pretty fast rock track, you're almost punk, you might say.
And everyone says, oh, it's such a sensitive jazz drummer.
You know, that was what's so different about him.
Well, not on this track.
No.
He's banging it.
Yeah.
I have to ask you Oxfordshire Pub as we record this.
I think days ago you walked into an Oxfordshire Pub and started singing to people.
How did that happen?
Were you off your meds?
What happened?
Yes, I didn't know where I was.
I had dinner at an Oxford college.
I went to an Oxford college.
I was invited to a dinner.
And very interesting people, very pleasant. lots of nice students.
And then one of the students that I was talking with said, I play mandolin.
I said, oh, that's nice.
I said, not the easiest instrument.
He said, I play mandolin.
I'm going down the road to play with an Irish band.
Mm-hmm.
So do you want to come?
So I said, sure.
And so I took a couple of people that I was with and the provost of the college and he took his gown off and got into the pub and It was a very small pub and very friendly people.
The band was doing fiddle pieces and the guy joined in with his mandolin, but no one was singing.
Right.
So I thought, well, here's an opening.
We're going to sing it.
This is my big chance.
This is my chance for pub crawling scene.
So I did a song that I'd actually recorded.
But I had to rehearse it just mentally because I hadn't sung it in years.
And I remember at least three verses.
It's like an old standard, right?
Everyone's done it.
I think even Bob Dylan's done it, I found out.
Right.
But not that I've heard it.
But I had to remember at least three verses in my head before I started.
So I didn't just launch into it.
Because the worst thing you can do is launch into a song and then you've got one verse.
I would pay to see that happen with you.
I'm sorry.
I would just love to see it.
But it was fun.
It was two minutes long.
Well that's, I mean that keys into.
I think the main point that I wanted to get across in this interview which is something that really strikes me in the short time that I've been able to hang out with you is that you were very much living in the moment, making things in the moment.
This album, Foreign Tongues, is of this moment.
And you?
I mean sitting at a dinner with you and watching you trying everyone else's food, stealing some of Ronnie's dessert.
And I thought you can converse about anything.
You're, you know, crazily, deeply read.
And you're just fascinated in all kinds of stuff.
And I thought, I left my time with you and I thought, I need, this is my new spirit animal.
Is Mick Jagger, I want to...
I aspire, not to be you, because that's not going to happen, but to kind of adopt that philosophy about life which is just bite into it stay interested, delight yourself.
I think that's like, you know, I don't think that attitude suits everyone.
Because some people some of your creativity.
If you're a creative person, let's imagine you will draw on your past.
You might draw on something that you had an idea for when you were 25.
You might have written a short story when you were in 25 and you didn't publish it and then you realized that that would make a great film script or that would make a novel that I could now write.
Now I'm 65, let's say.
So it's not true that you can't draw upon this idea whole well of your past and make it into something it's.
And so you you're not you you have to be aware of of your past, and but that doesn't mean you live in it and you know, you feel.
Of course, I'm always asked you know what happened when you did this?
And it was so long ago, and you find yourself like just repeating these stories and you know if they're even true anymore?
Yeah.
You know it's just like a you know footballer in a pub talking about his goal in 1972.
You know it's a, you don't want to become that and that's a danger.
So, yeah.
So everyone says live in the moment.
You know it's just a kind of like, a like, a kind of fashionable mantra, but I mean to a certain extent it's true.
And I mean I think also when you're writing, like these kind of ephemeral pop songs, which these this is what this business is.
You've got to stay in the present day.
So I was writing a song like Ringing Hollow you're thinking about the now, of what you're living through now which, of course, you never know could change by the time the record comes out.
But you can only write, you can't really look into the future, it's hard.
So you just write of the writing of the now.
You know, in a song like Divine Intervention you're writing of the now of what your feelings are, you know.
So there's a thing that runs through these lyrics of these songs that is definitely of the now and the kind of weird period and we kind of like it's.
It's difficult for some people living in this period and and um and, and you know, there's possibly dangers that you know that, that we're all in in some way or other, but we're geopolitical dangers or economic dangers um, and who knows what else, and and we're all a bit, We're a little bit sensitive to them.
I think people are sensitive to these things.
And so when I'm writing this stuff, I can't help myself, but I'm not setting out to even write.
It just comes out.
Yeah.
It's what's happening right now.
And these are scary times, but I have to thank you because you've given me you and the other lads have given me an enormous amount of joy in my life.
Thank you.
I'm glad.
That's what we're here for.
Before I became a bad guitarist, I was a bad drummer.
And when I was a kid I would set up my drum kit in the living room and put on Stones records and try and do what Charlie was doing.
And my parents let me do that.
And we had neighbors, they were lovely.
I can't believe I would not let my kids do that.
I would, i would smash the kit.
But you've given me enormous joy.
Um, lovely getting to know you uh, and talk to you and you're one of my favorite conversations.
I've been talking to people non-stop for 32 years and you're one of my favorite people.
That's very nice.
I hope the conversation today we we covered a few of the we got.
We got.
We didn't talk about your hillbilly guitar playing much and your guitar collection.
You may have mentioned that on these podcasts before.
No, we talked about it at dinner.
We got into my fascination with rockabilly and wanting to sing.
And funny, Keith heard me do Ronnie Hawkins a version of Ronnie Hawkins 40 days, where I do it twice as fast as Ronnie Hawkins.
And Keith said, you sound like a fucking auctioneer.
But yeah, this is one of the joys of my life.
And I'm so delighted that we were able to get together.
Yeah, me too.
And Foreign Tongues, please, when you get a moment, tour with this.
I try.
Because I really want to hear the songs live.
Yeah, me too.
All right.
I want to do it.
Thanks so much.
Nice to talk to you.
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gorley.
Produced by me, Matt Gorley.
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Take it away, Jimmy.
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