Keith Richards once said Mick Jagger needs the snip: “Mick’s a randy old bastard”
In the early 1960s, The Rolling Stones embarked on a transformative journey; emancipated from their early rhythm and blues covers, they could explore untrampled avenues of songcraft. While Brian Jones’ influence on the band withered under the strain of addiction, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards emerged as the driving forces behind the group’s creative direction.
This dynamic songwriting partnership challenged that of Lennon and McCartney and saw Richards mass-producing chart-topping guitar hooks while Jagger became a lyrical master. The Stones gained unprecedented momentum through the early 1970s with their masterpiece albums Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St, cementing The Rolling Stones’ position as the biggest rock band in the world.
Though they’ve impressively managed to remain relevant for over six decades and continue to tour to this day, Jagger and Richards’ relationship has endured a palpable degree of acrimony over that time. The pair’s most intense feud occurred in the late 1980s after their disappointing 18th UK studio album, Dirty Work.
Following this feud, Richards took a hiatus to release a couple of solo albums, but the pair managed to rebuild bridges. Like a married couple, the two musicians have their differences but appear to have found a way to stifle arguments before they erupt. This, of course, hasn’t stopped Richards from shooting his mouth off to the press about his bandmate.
In 2003, Jagger accepted a knighthood from the British monarchy. As an anti-royalist, Richards rejected his honour and had a few things to say to the press about Jagger. “I was surprised, actually, more than whether I was happy or unhappy,” Richards told the BBC. “This is a guy who went to the London School of Economics, for Christ’s sake. This is not one for the hierarchy. But anyway, I thought he should hang out for a peerage. A damn knighthood? I thought that was a cheap shot… Anyway, I wouldn’t let that family near me with a sharp stick, never mind a sword!”
“I don’t want to step on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine,” Richards added, speaking to The Insider. “I told Mick it’s a fucking paltry honour.”
Beyond knighthoods, Richards has used his sharp tongue to ridicule Jagger’s sex life over the years, more specifically, taking aim at his private parts. In 2010, Richards released his revealing autobiography Life, in which he referred to Jagger as “that bitch Brenda” and called him “unbearable”.
In another passage, he wrote: “Marianne Faithfull had no fun with his tiny todger. I know he’s got an enormous pair of balls – but it doesn’t quite fill the gap.”
Just five years later, Jagger, aged 73, announced that he was expecting another child with his girlfriend, Melanie. In a 2018 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Richards weighed in on the matter. “Mick’s a randy old bastard,” Keith said. “It’s time for the snip — you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!”
Evidently, Richards and Jagger have a fair deal of festering resentment but impressively always manage to bounce back and hit the stage. “Most guys, you know where you stand with,” Keith once told NPR of their complex relationship. “Mick and I don’t quite know how we stand with each other, and we never have.”
“Not everybody likes everybody all the time,” Richards added in a conversation with The Daily Mail in 2013. “But maybe you have a need for that conversation to continue, and music is the one way you can do that. It’s stronger than the other things that get in the way. It would be a miracle, wouldn’t it, in 50 years for two guys to get on, let alone three or four?”
“My main means of communication is through music,” he concluded. “Call it a gentlemen’s agreement or something like that. It’s unspoken, but I notice that many of the barriers or whatever you want to call them tend to disappear once we start working.”
