Life Lessons from Mick Jagger

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, to mark the 78th birthday of rock and roll legend Mick Jagger, we revisit a number of memorable quotes from our ’81 and ’85 conversations with the star in his heyday. So sit back and grab the tightest pants you own—you just might learn a thing or two.

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“I love The Rolling Stones. I think it’s a wonderful band, and I love being in it. I’m part of a group—I don’t have to write all the songs on my own, it’s not all my ideas. I’m one-fifth of that, so it’s easier in a way.”

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“I love America, but I can’t spend the whole year here. I can’t afford the taxes.”

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“I was going to do a Kirin Beer [advertisement] once. It’s very respectable now. Now it’s okay to do all those capitalist things when it wasn’t okay 20 years ago. The Clash can easily do perfume and I’m sure they would—or jeans or leather jackets or whatever. Twenty years ago, a band would rather have died than do leather jackets.”

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“For years, everyone had been saying, ‘Why don’t you do a solo album?’ I thought since I’d just spent a year with the Stones I didn’t want to go straight back into the studio with them. So, I thought, why don’t I do it on my own? I thought it would be fun to mess around a little bit.”

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“One’s private or emotional life is not always a linear graph. It dips around. Things don’t always go according to plan.”

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“I’m hungry for new experiences, the same things that everyone else wants out of life. Thrills. New things. Continuations of relationships or new ones, all those mixed-up feelings that go towards making up a full emotional life.”

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“I love my daughters, but it would be very nice to have a son. That’s not saying that I walk up and down the street thinking about it, to be honest.”

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“I’m a very citified person, and you have lots of these kinds of casual relationships that come up. They’re here today and gone tomorrow.”

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“I get really intense, and then I’ll become casual, usually. Or I’ll be casual, and then I’ll get intense and then casual.”

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“I don’t like the legal implications [of marriage.] It’s like signing a 356-page contract without knowing what’s in it. I think it’s bullshit. I’m just kind of happy going on the way I am.”

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“I don’t think I’ve been very lucky. Maybe it’s my own bad judgment.”

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“I was immature for a long time. You’ve got to be patient.”

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“You can’t have a stable relationship and go around and screw everything in sight. Yet, I’ve told Jerry [Hall] that I also can’t feel cut off from one half of the population.”

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“I see [this career] as a lot of different careers going into one. Maybe I’ll come to some major change in the next few years. I have some ideas, but I’m to going to tell you right now.”