Sir Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood joined Matt Wilkinson for The Rolling Stones: 60th Anniversary Special on Apple Music Hits. They discussed when Ronnie first saw The Stones play live, their love for new talent including Prince, Charlie Watts, the bands future in technology, Mick missing the ABBA show, and Mick speaking French.
Ronnie Wood
Yeah. I saw them in 1963 at the Richmond Jazz and Blues Festival, along with one of my favourite bands at the time, Cyril Davies All Stars, and my brother Art was singing was Cyril. John Baldry was in that band with Alexis Korner, and all that. The extension of the Blues, and the crossover from Jazz into Blues, and Rock and Roll, was just at the pivotal point where I saw the band. I saw the band that I wanted to be a part of, and I thought they are doing what I want to hear, what I want to do. Look at the presence of these guys and look at the girls. I said, that looks like a good job, and it was fantastic.
Ronnie Wood
The very early days, very melodic songs with a lot of feel. Mick’s always had the talent of peeling off the layers, like an onion of the modern day music, whatever the music is happening now, back in the day, he would discover bands like Shirley and Company, like shame, shame, shame, all the things like that. When Prince came out, Mick and Charlie, they saw this early talent that people were throwing cabbages at, dressed up camping, and in a Mac with women’s underwear on and stuff. The talent of his voice and playing was wonderful. We’ve always appreciated new talent, and also taking the leaf out of their book, or made space for them to come on the bill with us, or turn people onto them.
Mick Jagger
Yeah. I mean, we did a whole tour with him before this tour, so this is our second tour. If you introduce someone else into a band of people, it’s always going to change the dynamic, but Steve, he’s a great drummer, but also he’s one of these, like Charlie was, he’s a student of drumming. It’s not just a wang bash drummer, or even just a great drummer. He’s also a student of drumming. It’s like me being a student of a certain vocal styling. He can listen to Charlie’s performances on record, and live, obviously, and take those and keep the essence of what Charlie did in those songs without changing it very much. Of course, he will interpret them slightly differently, but he’ll keep the great things that Charlie did, and add his own thing to it. As he gets more confident, he will still retain the same thing, but it will be something his own.
Ronnie Wood
Oh, it’s been amazing. Keith, and I, and Darrell, especially. The engine room Darrell, and Steve are rocking. Darrell has changed in a way he comes closer, it’s like a magnet, and me and Keith are like magnetised to him. Mick has known him for years, just like Keith and I have. He’s an old friend of ours and he knew Charlie very well, too. He had Charlie’s blessing on joining the band until Charlie could get better and come back to us again. As he didn’t, God bless him, then Steve has, just like lighting the fuse on a firework, when Charlie played, on a firecracker. Now it’s like lighting a fuse on the whole box of fireworks is Steve Jordan. He is just amazing. He kicks and bosses us around musically, and we love it.
Mick Jagger
That would be stupid to me to give you a one line answer, because I haven’t really honestly thought about it. The ABBA thing gives you this kind of technology breakthrough, which I haven’t actually seen it yet. I was supposed to go and see it, but there was a train strike. So I didn’t get to go. I wasn’t going on the train, but the traffic was horrible, so I can’t really answer that. Obviously technology is going to give you some of the answers to this, and who knows what technology lies in store down the road? We’re already in an AI world of doing this stuff, and you can do a lot of musical stuff with not very complicated computerisation, as well.
Ronnie Wood
He adapts very much to the audiences, wherever we are playing, and speaks a little bit of their language and they kind of lap that up, and it’s kind of… Oh, I can’t wait till we get to Paris, for instance. Mick speaks very fluent French, and it’s a natural thing for him to fall into French, to be saturated with the French genre again.
Ronnie Wood
We all have talents in different ways. I like to paint. He likes to speak a little bit of Italian, as well for instance.
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