The Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger having trouble keeping ‘time’ due to Keith Richards changing it was detailed by bandmate Chuck Leavell in a new Vanity Fair interview. Leavell said it’s his job to make sure Jagger and Richards remain on the same page onstage.
“When I first came in, in 1982, the consistency was not always there. The graph was up and down quite a lot. Now the graph is pretty much a straight line.”
Richards generally wants tempos slower, while Jagger wants them faster, leading to mistakes. Mick Jagger doesn’t make mistakes with ladies though, as him rejecting older women was just revealed.
“There have been times when [Keith] made it very apparent that he thought it should slow down a little bit. He’ll give me ‘the look.’”
“It’s part of my job to watch almost [Jagger’s] every move, because if there’s any question in his mind on a musical issue, I’ve got to be there for him. That’s my job. And I want to be there for him. I’m watching him probably more than the audience is.”
“Chuck has been such an integral part of the Stones’ musical path through the years, and always there when you need someone to lean on,” Jagger said about working with Leavell. “He also helps me enormously with the way the setlists are compiled and differ night to night. Its been a great pleasure to play with him.”
The Rolling Stones fans on Reddit recently defended Their Satanic Majesties Request, which will celebrate its 52nd anniversary next week. Tony-T_ismydad posted, “I think the reason it was panned by critics at the time of release is telling of how contentious 1967 was musically. I think if that album was released nowadays it would blow every other release out of the water.”
Mick Jagger needing a doctor was recently detailed. APFelo responded, “I don’t think TSMR is a bad album, but I think the recent critical reassessment has gone a little far the other way from its original reviews. It definitely has some great tracks, like 2000 Light Years From Home, Citadel, and She’s a Rainbow, but these songs are buried amongst pretty uninteresting songs that are basically jams like Sing This All Together (See What Happens) and Gomper which means this album doesn’t play nearly as well as well as their best records.
I like the weirdness of the album and I think it’s cool that the album is completely different from anything else in the Stones’ catalogue, but they really needed someone like Jimmy Miller or Andrew Loog Oldham at this point in their career to rein them in and make sure they were actually making songs. I do love the sort of psychedelic hard rock sound they had with 2000 Light Years from Home and Citadel and kind of wish they made more songs like those.”
You can read the full Chuck Leavell piece at Vanity Fair.
