The 1970s band Mick Jagger said had nothing to offer: “The same old thing”
Mick Jagger wasn’t planning on being a snob of rock and roll when he first started making records.
He liked the idea of The Rolling Stones pushing themselves and toying around with different sounds every now and again, but when you look at some of their experiments, there are more than a few times where they were trying to go down some very questionable artistic roads. But even if they had moments where they embarrassed themselves, Jagger would have rather kept things interesting than go down the same boring roads over and over again whenever he made a record.
Because when you think about it, all good rock and roll is about trying to do something no one has ever heard before. Sure, The Stones got their foot in the door by making music that was indebted to the blues when they started, but a lot of their best music came when they were making things a little bit more nasty, whether that was twisting the idea of a guitar riff into ‘Satisfaction’ or when they created an apocalyptic-style blues on a song like ‘Gimme Shelter’.
But by the late 1970s, the genre had shifted drastically once again. The biggest names in the world were coming from the punk and New Wave scenes, and even though Jagger liked the idea of making great tunes as they had done on Sticky Fingers, there were just as many moments where he could see The Stones capturing the same kind of audience that Blondie and The New York Dolls had. Then again, that wasn’t what was going on on the other side of the country.
No, the biggest names in Los Angeles were all about making music that was a bit more rootsy, and even though the East Coast had its hometown heroes like Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles were going even further back for inspiration. Their greatest inspirations were people like Kenny Rogers and Gram Parsons, and while Jagger was even friends with Parsons up until his death, he felt that the band needed to be evolving a little bit more than what he heard in songs like ‘Desperado’.
Even though Jagger was already jaded about LA being more business-minded, he was a lot more frustrated with bands like Eagles getting popular, saying, “No one wants to step out of line because there’s still so many Linda Ronstadt albums, who is very sweet, but they just keep going. No one likes new bands; they like the same old thing. There’s very little live entertainment. There’s no new rash groups. There’s more or less your old-fashioned groups. I don’t have to name names, but the Eagles.”
Then again, it’s not like Jagger is that far off the mark when it comes to the performance aspect of everything. Say what you want about Eagles having great songs, but the fact that one critic talked about them “loitering” onstage back in the day is the most apt description of what they did. I mean, you could probably draw chalk outlines around their feet throughout all of their classic gigs, and they probably wouldn’t have moved throughout their entire night before they got Joe Walsh in the band.
Not all of the biggest punk rock groups ever went the distance like Eagles did, but you can definitely feel that surge of energy whenever looking at footage of them playing back in the day. Everyone from Blondie to The Clash were going to give their fans a show to remember, whereas Don Henley was going to give the people great songs and a show that was only decent by comparison.
Jagger could have easily been seen as the crotchety old band talking about the new kids on the block, but really, he was looking out for the little guy. Rock and roll was still a young man’s game at this point, and he wanted to make sure that fans had something that they were going to remember whenever they saw their favourite band.
