“Absolute bullshit”: The musician that Mick Jagger wanted to throttle
Stepping into the ring at 5’10” with the frame of a svelte figure skater, Mick Jagger is a fierce scrapping proposition. There might be a harsh bark to the punky frontman, but there are a few folks out there who seem to think the bite doesn’t quite match.
As Ian Anderson comically declared, “Mick Jagger always looked too self-conscious to be considered a tough guy; he looked like he’d fall over if you blew on him.“ He might have put up plenty of front, but Keith Richards claims it was actually their laidback and smartly sartorial sticksmith with the heavy hands.
“There was a rare moment, in late 1984, of Charlie [Watts’ throwing his drummer’s punch,“ he recalled, “A punch I’ve seen a couple of times and it’s lethal; it carries a lot of balance and timing. He has to be badly provoked.“
So, while run-ins with Hell’s Angels, cutting jibes hurled at other bands, and stints behind bars might have painted The Rolling Stones as though rebels, a few of their peers weren’t quite fooled. Lemmy weighed in on the matter in his memoir, too. “The Beatles were hard men,” he wrote.
In contrast, he thought The Stones simply put on a façade of blue-collar hardship to sharpen their image. “The Rolling Stones were the mummy’s boys,” the Motorhead rocker continued, “They went to starve in London, but it was by choice, to give themselves some sort of aura of disrespectability.”
A manufactured ”aura” or otherwise, there were some fellows over the years at whom Jagger truly wanted to take a swing. Aerosmith might have built up a reputation as the new wayward partiers on the scene, but in a similar manner to Lemmy’s appraisal of the Stones, Jagger figured that their image didn’t quite stand the test of reality, particularly when it came to their frontman, Steven Tyler.
“He’s such a little sweetheart,“ Jagger sneered when asked about the rising band. “What can you do with him? Punch ‘im in the mouth? Here, what are you playing at, fuckin’ impersonating me?” It wasn’t just the similar pouting, the floaty outfits or the singing style that he was annoyed about, either. He figured that he was ripping off his sacred rock ‘n’ roll affrontery, too.
He grew to truly loathe the band that cited The Rolling Stones as absolute inspirations. “Oh God, Aerosmith!” he spat when asked for his thoughts, “They’re just rubbish – absolute bullshit.”
So, this might’ve led to a rather awkward one-way feud, one-way love-in, but thankfully, it never came to blows; otherwise, some of Tyler’s blusher might have been disturbed. Now, they’re pretty much friends and have frequently happily posed together at swanky rock ‘n’ roll parties.
In fact, when Aerosmith were inducted into the lavish mausoleum of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tyler even joked, ”I wonder if this’ll put an end to ‘Hey, aren’t you Mick Jagger’?” He might’ve laughed, but the ‘Paint It Black’ singer might’ve also quipped, ‘Shame I got there 12 years before you’.
