I’ve known Mick Jagger for decades – here’s the secret to the Rolling Stones’ singer’s incredible fitness as he turns 80
“HERE’S Michael wearing an ordinary pair of gym shoes,” says the rock climbing expert.
The year is 1959, the TV programme is Seeing Sports and the place is High Rocks, near Tunbridge Wells, in deepest Kent.
This is the wider world’s first fleeting glimpse of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest showman, Mick Jagger.
For among the group of budding climbers is the teenager who went on to strut and shimmy his way across the planet for more than 60 years with the Rolling Stones and who turns 80 next Wednesday.
Wearing a striped shirt and drainpipes as well as his flimsy gym shoes, Mick is seen securing a rope and shouting, “I’m coming up!” before his nimble frame begins its ascent.
You could say this was the moment he became a “rock” star.
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Now let’s go forward more than six decades to last summer and the Stones are playing British Summer Time in Hyde Park.
It’s an emotionally charged evening as Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood pay respects to their fallen bandmate Charlie Watts.
For two hours, that same nimble, pencil-thin frame — but nearing 79 years on this earth — puts in a staggering, swaggering, Jagger-ing performance.
Bringing high drama to a final stretch of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Sympathy For The Devil and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, he holds the crowd in the palms of his outstretched hands . . . just like he always has.
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Still a preening peacock with a dazzling array of flashy jackets and super-tight trousers, Sir Michael Philip Jagger towers above his peers when it comes to sheer energy.
To borrow from Maroon 5’s ear worm hit, no one has “moves like Jagger”.
The star of this year’s Glastonbury, Sir Elton John, once told me of his admiration for his fellow rock star knight of the realm.
“I don’t know how Mick does it,” said the Rocket Man with just a hint of envy in his voice.
“He’s an extraordinary professional, probably the most professional person in the music business I’ve met.
“When Mick goes on stage, he’s the frontman while I’m stuck at the plank (his term for grand piano), thank God!
“I used to hate it in my early days but now one is hurtling well past pensioner time, I’m glad I’m there.”
Elton also saw no reason why Mick and the rest of the Stones should head off into the sunset and retire.
He said: “People say, ‘Oh they should stop’, but I say, ‘Bulls**t!’ They like to play and they like to earn the money!”
Beautiful women
In one of my always memorable encounters with the inimitable Richards, I inquired whether he had a fitness routine.
“No, no, no, God forbid!” he cried in his piratical rasp. “I do a bit on the bike, a bit on the treadmill but, I mean, nothing to write home about.
“Mick’s the one who has the exercise routine. He is a fitness man, you know. His father was a PE instructor.”
The affable Ronnie Wood, whose infectious good humour helps glue the Stones together, shared this insight: “If you let anything stand for long, it will go sour.
“Look at Mick, he doesn’t let things stand. He’s always working out. I don’t exactly know how he does it but he certainly keeps doing it.”
And Richards quipped: “Well, I lend him some energy and I think Ronnie lends him some, too. So far as I know, he doesn’t feel any pain!”
If stories of rock ’n’ roll excess surrounded the early careers of Jagger, Richards and Wood, I can confirm that Mick’s body is a temple these days.
He keeps his voice in great shape, beginning his vocal exercises at least two months before every Stones tour begins.
I guess Jagger’s life less ordinary can be compared to a thoroughbred racehorse that has stayed the distance.
It has involved a trail of beautiful women, a few headline-grabbing controversies . . . and countless classic songs written with Richards.
His list of partners reads like a geography lesson.
It includes Sixties siren Marianne Faithfull, American singer Marsha Hunt, his Nicaraguan wife Bianca (the only one he married), Texan model Jerry Hall (mum to four of his eight kids), Italian singer/model Carla Bruni, Brazilian model Luciana Giminez and fashion designer L’Wren Scott, another American.
Let’s not forget, too, that Jagger is a father, grandfather, great-grandfather, style icon, film-maker, astute self-taught businessman and cricket lover who will be gripped by the Ashes as I write.
Style icon
On the personal front, he remains very close to his choreographer and former ballerina girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, mother of the youngest of his children, six-year-old Deveraux.
However, a friend of the singer tells me that recent reports of their engagement to be married are unfounded.
That said, 2023 is shaping up to be another momentous year for rock’s most enduring frontman because the Stones’ first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang is due in October.
Delayed by the Covid pandemic and the devastating loss of Watts, the buzz around the new songs is already building to a deafening roar.
But to get inside this ever-fascinating character, we must go back in time again to 1961, two years after his televised rock climbing antics.
As commemorated by a blue plaque, he bumped into Richards on Platform 2 of Dartford Station and they instantly bonded over their shared love of the blues, notably Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.
Cue the birth of the Rolling Stones, the sleazy, sexy, dangerous alternative to the clean-cut Beatles.
In his early days as a performer, Jagger looked to America for inspiration and two great showmen were his guiding lights.
From rock ’n’ roll came Little Richard and from soul, James Brown.
I spoke to Jagger in 2014 to mark his production company’s biopic about Brown’s troubled life AND artistic brilliance.
“I went to see him over and over and I tried some of his moves,” he said, recalling his impressionable early Sixties self.
“I did some very bad imitations but they were fun.”
'Evolved your own style'
Then, he added: “We also did a tour with Little Richard, who was very generous in explaining to me how to deal with an audience.
“You’re in this phase of your career when you’re 19 or 20 and you’re basically doing cover versions and copying other people.
“Everybody did it and, if you got any good, you evolved your own style.”
That, of course, is exactly what Jagger did, although another hugely important influence was the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll, the late, great Tina Turner.
Ike and Tina were invited to support the Stones on their 1966 UK tour.
She struck up a friendship with Mick, calling him “the little boy from Dartford”.
He would watch her from the side of the stage and soon they were trading dance moves.
Jagger told me the secret of his stage craft: “It’s all about working audiences and never giving up.
“Don’t overdo it. Don’t harangue them. Just get them involved.”
In the mid-Sixties, the Stones released a string of Jagger/Richards-penned hits which made them the closest rivals to The Beatles.
These included the adrenalin rush of Paint It Black, the immortal hook of Satisfaction and the rebel yell of Get Off Of My Cloud.
Then the intuitive songwriting partnership hit overdrive with a string of consecutive classic albums, Beggar’s Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile On Main St. (1972).
Tantalising prospect
These yielded Sympathy For The Devil, Street Fighting Man, Midnight Rambler, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Tumbling Dice and more classics.
Worth noting here . . . we know Jagger is a consummate singer and showman but he’s also a fabulous harmonica player and a fine lyricist.
He’s particularly proud of yearning You Can’t Always Get What You Want, with its unforgettable opening lines, “I saw her today at the reception/A glass Of wine in her hand”.
And, I’m told, the final song on Sticky Fingers, Moonlight Mile, a raw ballad about his drug-fuelled life on tour in the late Sixties.
It begins: “When the wind blows and the rain feels cold/With a head full of snow, with a head full of snow.”
As Jagger’s career with the Stones progressed, including welcoming Ronnie Wood into the fold in 1976 and releasing 1978’s sleazy tour de force Some Girls, there were inevitable strains in his relationship with Richards.
The cooling off came to a head in 1986 when, following the poorly- received Dirty Work album, both pursued solo projects and we saw Jagger preferring to be Dancing In The Street with David Bowie.
Richards reflected on this period in one of my chats with him: “Mick and I had been joined at the hip for more than 20 years and we both thought, ‘Let’s go off and do what we want amongst ourselves’.”
But when he took to the stage as the singer and guitarist in his band The X-pensive Winos, his regard for Jagger soared.
“I thought, ‘Wow!’” he said. “Suddenly I had a whole new appreciation of Mick.
“It’s non-stop if you’re at the front, whereas with the Stones, I could discreetly pull back and hang with Charlie.
“There’s no leeway when you’re the frontman and that took some learning. Well, there it is, I’m saying it, ‘Hats off to Mick!’”
'Great vibe'
When the Stones reconvened for 1989’s Steel Wheels, “there was such a great vibe”, remembers Richards.
“Because me and Mick had taken a break, we came back to each other with a certain new respect.
“Maybe we realised how much we needed each other.”
He added: “I can praise Charlie 100 per cent of the time and I can praise Mick 99.9 per cent of the time.
“Mick knows what I mean and he’ll say the same about me. Things happen between us because it’s just two guys working together.
“You only hear of the odd bust-up. I love the man.”
Since the turn of the millennium, the Stones juggernaut has swung into action every few years for tours across the globe and just a couple of studio albums.
Now we have the tantalising prospect of new original music.
But for Jagger, Richards and Wood, the loss of drummer Watts in 2021 hit hard.
In paying tribute, Mick described Charlie’s impeccable drumming and also their close relationship.
“We had a lot of wonderful times apart from playing music together. We used to go and watch cricket,” he said.
“When we’d get together, we didn’t talk about music. We talked about art, and he knew a lot more about it than I did.”
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But I’ll leave you with a quote from Alice Cooper, who told me: “Jagger is the prototype, the Energizer bunny who goes on for ever.
“We all look up to Mick and we’ve all taken a little bit from him.”
