Stephen Stills always found Mick Jagger “devastatingly annoying” to watch
In the age of media training, we’ve lost the joy and art of musicians going for each other’s throats. Or not even that, it doesn’t have to be that harsh. We’ve simply lost the beauty of musicians not being afraid to critique one another, or share when they just don’t let someone else – like in this moment, when Stephen Stills didn’t hold anything back.
Back in the golden age of music journalism, that was a regular occurrence. Bands and artists didn’t seem to think twice about starting a little war of words. Instead, they’d sit down for an interview and start ranting and raving away about exactly why they hated one of their peers, or precisely what they thought another act was getting very wrong.
It led to some of the finest lines in musical history, like the moment when the Sex Pistols told The Rolling Stones to retire, or the countless savage remarks thrown back and forth between Blur and Oasis. But now? In an age where everyone is too worried about their own branding, it’s all painfully nice.
So let’s go back in time to the good old days when bands would get bitchy, like when Stills saw no issue at all in sitting down with Classic Rock and straight up calling Mick Jagger “annoying”.
Sadly, though, even this 2007 comment isn’t quite as catty as that one word might lead you to believe. Instead, there’s a degree of self-deprecation in Stills’ remark as he said, of watching The Stones, “It’s like watching someone who’s two years older than me doing 40-yard sprints. It’s devastatingly annoying.”
So really, Stills is attacking himself to a certain degree, seemingly commenting on Jagger’s fitness and the fact that he could never keep up – not that he’d want to. Jagger’s specific and unique performance style isn’t for everyone, as while hordes and hordes of fans are obsessed with his swaggering hips, Stills always thought he just looked “possessed”.
It’s not a blight on his personality. “He was quite charming, always has been. I played with them once. I wish they still had that tape because it was absolutely amazing, the noise that we made between us,” Stills recalled, but even then, there was a touch of jealous rivalry as he added, “We were just batting around”.
It’s simply that Stills and Jagger exist in the same realm, but also very, very different ones. While both exist in the rock world, Stills saw them as sitting on two sides of a clear divide, stating, “You know the old joke,” before delivering the punchline: “Blues musicians play three notes for 10,000 people, and jazz musicians play 1,000 notes for three people.”
There’s more bitchiness in that, as it seems to suggest that Stills sees himself as a player with nuance and skill, while he sees The Stones as an easier act. Any snark delivered towards Jagger doesn’t touch Keith Richards, though, as Stills defended his bandmate, piling on the praise as he said, “He inspires me. He’s tough as nails and the soul of rock ‘n’ roll of our generation—of our lifetime, really. Keef is just Keef.”
