Mick Jagger explains the huge difference between his competitive rivalries with David Bowie and John Lennon
Mick Jagger has reflected on his friendships with the late David Bowie and John Lennon, which were both “competitive” in their own unique ways.
Jagger and Bowie gravitated towards each other when they both lived in New York during the 1980s, which led to the creation of their classic 1985 collaboration, ‘Dancing in the Street‘.
Looking back at their unique relationship, while speaking to Conan O’Brien on the Conan Needs A Friend podcast, after the comedian noted how Jagger previously privately told him that he and were Bowie were “competitive but remained good friends”.
Jagger shared, “Yeah, we were competitive. David was so competitive, much more competitive (than me). I was made competitive by David. He was so competitive that I had to be competitive back.”
He elaborated, “David went through all these different iterations. There isn’t one David Bowie. There’s kind of like a slowly evolving David Bowie. There’s jump cuts of, you know, to another David Bowie, another style. When he was doing like ‘Jean Genie’, he was very Stonesy. That was a very Stonesy period.”
The Stones frontman then recalled his first response to ‘The Jean Genie’, telling Bowie, “‘God, you nicked all my things”, but rather than deny it, Bowie hilariously responded, “‘Yeah, I know man, I know, but it’s like a homage to you’,” according to Jagger.
Bowie wasn’t the only musical friend whose friendship with Jagger had a competitive edge to it; John Lennon was also in this boat, but for very different reasons.
Jagger explained, “I think John and I were very competitive too, John Lennon. But we’re more competitive in being sarcastic. Just verbal competitiveness.”
He then asked Conan if he’d ever seen the famous video of Lennon and Bob Dylan in the back of a taxi while completely stoned in 1966, which he said “was John at his most… he’s being very sarcastic with Bob and Bob’s not really coming back with zingy answers.”
He added, “It does give you a good illustration of (John Lennon), because most of the other things are kind of short, and that’s extended sarcasm (laughs).”
While Jagger said Lennon “could be lovely”, he also said, “He’s one of those people that if you’d say something stupid he’d pick you up (on it). He’d clock it right away.”
“He was very competitive about it, he wasn’t competitive about anything else,” before clarifying he meant the competitiveness was strictly about “being funny and sarcastic”, which he says is “a kind of Liverpool thing.”
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