Last night I was declaiming on the artistic (as opposed to the commercial) merits of the latest Pink Floyd album, The Endless River, when a friend began rhapsodizing about the Rolling Stones and their pouty-lipped leader, Mick Jagger. The uncultured gall; I was not pleased.
As much as I admire the Stones’ longevity, I’m no fan of their music. I’m more into Led Zeppelin and, of course, Pink Floyd. In fact, the Rolling Stones have always struck me as the sort of Boy Band Simon Cowell, the wizard behind One Direction, would have manufactured if he were around in the early 1960s….
But, more to the point of this gripe, I’m even less a fan of Mick Jagger. As it happens, the media have been reporting more on his personal life than his music lately. And the focus of that reporting has been the fallout from the death in March of his girlfriend, fashion designer L’Wren Scott.
According to Forbes magazine, Mick has a net worth of $325 million. Therefore, it speaks volumes about the kind of relationship L’Wren had with her family that she left “everything, and I mean everything,” to him. Mind you, it probably speaks even greater volumes about the kind of mental stress, if not emotional duress, L’Wren was under that she committed suicide….
Whatever the case, it was unseemly enough that Mick got embroiled in a fight with her family over her dead body and her $9 million estate:
Jan Shane, the sister of deceased designer L’Wren Scott feels cheated by Mick Jagger after he opted to have the funeral of his long-time girlfriend moved to L.A. Unfortunately, Jan can’t do anything about where the body of her sister now rests but she has vowed to take the fight right to Mick for a share of L’Wren’s fortune and to reclaim some priceless family heirlooms.
(Hollywood Life, March 27, 2014)
Now come reports that he’s embroiled in yet another fight over money. This one has insurers going after him for attempting to claim millions for shows he canceled, ostensibly, to grieve L’Wren’s death. Never mind the paparazzi shots of him just weeks later grieving in the bosom of a fetching brunette — who bears an uncanny resemblance to a 20-something-year-old L’Wren.
But Mick’s preening self-importance is such that he sees nothing ironical, if not hypocritical, about looking to her brother to help him substantiate his claim (or at least to not undermine it):
The Rolling Stones are embroiled in a legal feud with insurance underwriters who refused to pay $12.7 million for a tour cancellation following the suicide of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend L’Wren Scott.
The dispute came to light in court documents filed in the western U.S. state of Utah, where the insurers are seeking to speak to Scott’s brother to bolster their case against the rock legends.
(Agence France-Presse, November 11, 2014)
Based on these two stories, you could be forgiven the impression that, when it comes to money, Mick is one niggardly SOB. But this was brought into shameful relief for me years ago when one of his old girlfriends, former Black model Marsha Hunt, went public with her heartbreak over the way Mick tried to disown their love child to avoid paying child support.
He even got embroiled in a bitter fight with Hunt – the reputed inspiration for the Stones’ 1971 hit “Brown Sugar” – after abject poverty forced her to file a series of paternity suits against Mick (in 1973 and 1978, when their daughter Karis was 7). And even then (as Hunt tells it in a September 26, 2008, interview with the Daily Mail), he did not begin treating the child as his until years later, when she was 12.
How ironic, then, that it was this very love child who “saved him in his darkest hour:”
Even by his frugal standards, it was a low blow — one that should have spelled the death knell for any relationship between father and daughter.
How times have changed. For this week, that disowned daughter was very publicly his greatest support on the bleakest day of his life.
Karis, 43, Mick’s eldest child, was firmly by her father’s side when they laid his long-term girlfriend L’Wren Scott to rest, after she was found hanged in New York on March 17.
(Daily Mail, March 28, 2014)
All of the above paints a pretty ugly picture of the character of this celebrated grandpa of rock and roll. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, given the scroll of his backstabbing and betrayal, which bandmate Keith Richards gripes about in his critically acclaimed 2011 autobiography, Life.
But anyone who knows of my congenital aversion to British royalty will appreciate that I lost what little respect I had for Mick when he accepted a knighthood in 2002 … as if it were the crowning achievement of his life.
I have long maintained that royalty makes a mockery of the universal principle that all people are created equal. Moreover, that any democracy that institutionalizes royalty in the twenty-first century is almost as cancerous (and oxymoronic) as any that institutionalized slavery in the nineteenth.
(“The Problem Is Not Kate’s Weight; It’s William’s Title,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 16, 2011)
It is understandable, of course, that the royal family would think that knighting Mick would bestow upon it street cred so devoutly to be wished. What is not, however, is that he would betray the anti-establishment creed that made him a rock ’n roll legend just to put on royal airs. In fact, nothing indicates how venal this quid-pro-quo was quite like the Queen dispatching Prince Charles to knight Mick because she could not “stomach” doing so in light of the anti-monarchy views he used to express so proudly.
Incidentally, David Bowie stands as a real rock star in this regard, having rejected solicitations to help the anachronistic royal family propagate its relevance by bestowing “honours,” strategically, upon genuflecting subjects….
But what makes Mick’s knighthood an even greater betrayal is that he accepted it without regard for the inherent disrespect the offer showed for his bandmates. After all, the international acclaim for which he was being recognized stemmed not from any individual achievement, but from his membership in the Rolling Stones. (At least the Beatles’ Paul McCartney can justify his solo knighthood by pointing to the considerable acclaim he won with his solo band, Wings.)
Not that Keith was/is jealous, mind you:
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has hit out at bandmate Mick Jagger’s ‘ludicrous’ decision to accept a knighthood.
Richards said he did not want to go on stage with someone wearing a “coronet and sporting the old ermine” and told the singer it was a ‘paltry honour’.
‘It sent out the wrong message. It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?’
(BBC, December 4, 2003)
But this is why, despite the tragedy that made Mick seem so vulnerable, I can muster no “Sympathy for [this] Devil.”
That said, I feel constrained to note that this latest (and reportedly last) Pink Floyd album sucks. Frankly, it just shows why certain songs never make it onto platinum-selling albums. So be advised when you hear popular musicians promoting “previously unreleased” songs.
I am, er, royally disappointed in this case because, unlike the executors of Michael Jackson’s estate, the members of Pink Floyd do not even need the cash this album will surely generate to pay off hundreds of millions in debts.
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