The artist Mick Jagger called bullshit: “Fuckin’ impersonating me”
The term classic rock turfs up different eras, depending on whom you ask. The elderly among us might deem Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry as classic rock and anything in the 1960s and thereafter as an incoherent genre-blend. There is some sense in this perception, but from a modern perspective, classic rock can pertain to any rock music up to the punk wave in the late 1970s. By this metric, Mick Jagger is among the last classic rock icons.
Jagger’s band, The Roling Stones, was lucky enough to emerge alongside The Beatles. While often posed as rivals, the two groups were mutually appreciative through the 1960s, and the latter opened crucial doors for the former. When The Beatles finally called it a day in 1970, The Rolling Stones usurped the rock throne alongside prominent contemporaries like The Who and Led Zeppelin.
Following psychedelic treatments of the 1960s, rock was poised to propagate into ever-tightening niches as the 1970s progressed. Complexity spanned from Sid Vicious’s bass command to the intricacies of Jimmy Page’s guitar compositions, and weight ranged from Black Sabbath’s famously heavy metal to the comparatively tame soft rock of Eagles. From somewhere in this chaotic mix, Aerosmith emerged, a band for whom Jagger had very little time.
In a 1977 interview, The Rolling Stones frontman discussed Aerosmith at the height of their power, categorically panning the Boston rockers. “Oh God, Aerosmith,” he spewed with contempt. “They’re just rubbish – absolute bullshit.” Two years prior, the band had released their breakthrough album, Toys in the Attic, which earned them respect among many peers and enthusiastic fans, but Jagger was having none of it.
Jagger seemed to take issue with comparisons many fans made between The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith at the time. “The singer is quite a nice guy, mind you,” Jagger hastened to add. “He’s almost too bloody sweet. He’s very kind to me, anyway. Yeah, you know what I mean. He’s such a little sweetheart, really – what can you do with him? Punch ‘im in the mouth? Here, what are you playing at, fuckin’ impersonating me? – Slam!”
Jagger seemed to posit that, although frontman Steve Tyler was a friendly guy, he didn’t take too kindly to the American cramping his style. When New York Dolls emerged in the early ’70s, fans began comparing Jagger’s countenance to that of David Johansen. Similar comparisons were soon made between Jagger and Tyler, too. Understandably, the Stones singer was uncomfortable with this as the original Jagger.
Severely compounding Jagger’s reaction to his Tyler comparisons was Aerosmith’s music, which he deemed “rubbish”. Although the band drew fans with catchy riffs and charisma, they were frequently criticised for formulaic and repetitive tendencies.
Like Guns N’ Roses, who arrived in the 1980s, Aerosmith celebrated classic rock sounds with very little originality and a somewhat cheesy sound, especially to the British ear. It would be interesting to hear Jagger’s revised opinion on the band in 1998 following the arrival of the emetic power ballad ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’.
