IT'S BEEN TOUGH TIMES FOR THE ROLLING STONES - HEALTH SCARES, LOSING CHARLIE, PLUS AN ALBUM THEY COULD NEVER SEEM TO FINISH. BUT WITH A NEW DRUMMER, NEW PRODUCER AND NEW URGENCY THEY GRASPED THE NETTLE, BECAUSE WHO KNOWS WHAT TOMORROW MIGHT BRING? "WE NEEDED SOME REAL," THEY TELL DANNY ECCLESTON, "SO WE GOT AS REAL AS WE COULD GET."

Mark Seliger

Crown jewels: The Rolling Stones in New York City, 2023 (from left) Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK SELIGER.

Diamonds’ lights (from left) Paul McCartney with Keith and Brian, 1964

Elton John with Bill, 1975

Getty (2), New York Times/Redux/Eyevine, Alamy

Stevie Wonder and Mick, 1974

Lady Gaga and Mick, 2012.

IN JULY 2022, MICK JAGGER CO-STARRED IN MY LIFE AS A ROLLING STONE, a four-part TV documentary that focused on each of The Rolling Stones in turn. Filmed in time to capture a typically self-effacing inter view with Charlie Watts, but debuting nearly a year after his death in August 2021, it became a de facto memorial for the departed dr ummer.

As the curtain rose on Episode 1, the Stones singer announced that he hoped it would explode some of the more tedious myths about the group. A signal for the doc to retread ever y cliché around their music and their history, ticking all the boxes marked ‘dark’, ‘dangerous’, ‘sexy’, ‘the anti-Beatles’, ‘rock’n’roll incarnate’ et cetera.

Reminded of this in September 2023, Jagger groans and rolls his eyes theatrically. “Well,” he protests in rubbery Dartford tones. “I didn’t edit the thing…”

So how about some myth-busting in the pages of MOJO? What would Jagger say is the wrongest thing ever stated about his band?

“That’s a difficult one,” he frowns. “I was so full of it on the TV show, wasn’t I? (Pompous voice) ‘Shooting down the myths!’ Now I can’t think of any.” MOJO wonders if it’s a good idea to mention this but does so anyway. How about the story from 1984, where Jagger and Richards return from a carouse to their Amsterdam hotel in the early hours? The one where Jagger demands “Where’s my drummer?” and insists that Charlie Watts be turfed out of his bed? Whereupon Watts dresses in the sharpest of his suits, marches to Jagger’s room, tells his singer never to call him his drummer again, and drops him with a straight right to the chops? Jagger shakes his mousy mane. “Didn’t happen. No, not at all. Keith invented that story. Now, Charlie was annoyed,” Jagger concedes, “and he was very drunk, as was Keith. And he was a bit wound up. But there were so many people there, so many people between me and Charlie, and it never came to blows.”

There’s an embellishment that MOJO read, where Watts knocks Jagger onto a table of smoked salmon and the singer nearly slides out of an open window to his doom. Jagger thinks this is hilarious.

“A table full of smoked salmon!” he hoots. “That’s a good one. How about we go one better? I turned into a smoked salmon and dived out the window? Yeah, that’s what really happened.”

Too good to be true? It’s a scenario that endorses the most cherished stereotypes of the Stones: the camply imperious Jagger; the noble, dapper Watts; and – peddling gossip from the most problematic period in his relationship with the singer – the anarchic, Jagger-baiting Keith Richards. Has the story ever bothered Jagger? Or is it just grist to the mill of the Stones legend – part of their armour, even?

“Yeah, I don’t really care,” chuckles Jagger. “You won’t find me getting all (blustery Rumpole voice) ‘That never happened! I must object!’ I mean, it’s nonsense. But if that’s what Keith wants to believe…”

ENTHRONED IN A PLUSH KNIGHTSBRIDGE HOTEL suite, dressed in a thin white chemise with paintbrushy black swooshes, surrounded by cameras, boom mikes, PRs and other evidence of the world’s fascination, Jagger is doing what he’s been doing very successfully since 1962: selling The Rolling Stones. Down the corridor, in separate suites, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood are busy adding their own more freeform variations.

Yesterday, the trio sashayed into east London’s Hackney Empire for a glitzy (for Hackney) launch event for Hackney Diamonds, the first album of new Rolling Stones songs since 2005’s A Bigger

Bang – an eon in the lifespan of ordinary bands. Housing material from as far back as 2019 – two tracks feature Watts on drums – it mostly hails from late 2022 sessions in New York’s Electric Lady (September-October) and LA’s Henson studios (November), the latter helmed by 32-year-old hotshot producer Andrew Watt.

But why Hackney Diamonds? And why Hackney? “Because we’re a London band,” announced Richards at the launch. “Says a guy who lives in Connecticut!” laughs Jagger today. “Who never comes here! Still, it sounds good. I’m glad he still feels it.”

Perhaps because MOJO’s mostly-music agenda represents a breather from the socio-political fixations of other interlocutors – for instance, the “French bloke, all good-looking and chicly done up, who showed me ancient pictures of me and Françoise Hardy in, like, 1964. Hilarious” – Jagger seems unusually relaxed, flopping around on his chair, scr unching his face into frequent laughter, comfortable with off-piste lines of questioning. It’s a cliché as boring as any he failed to explode in My Life As A Rolling Stone that Jagger doesn’t look 80. Close up, he looks, sounds and acts almost ridiculously not-80.