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Hi, I'm Mick Jagger and I'm feeling rather anxious about being Conan O'Brien's friend. It's a heavy thing. It is, and we're in an enclosed, very small space together.

fall is here hear the yell back to school ring the bell brand new shoes walking blues climb the fence books and pens i can tell that we are gonna be friends yes i can tell that we are gonna be friends hey there welcome to conan o'brien needs a friend

I'm not with the gang today. No Sona, no Gourley, no Blay, no Eduardo. I'm pretty much on my own. Why, you ask? Because I got a phone call, oh, just a couple of days ago. And I'm in Los Angeles. And the question was, would you like to come to London to interview one of the most famous people in the world? And I really thought about it. It was a tough call because I have my Pilates class. I take a Lamaze class, even though I don't know anyone who's pregnant. I just go there and I've been asked to leave. I have my yogurt regimen, but I said, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it because this is the thrill of a lifetime. So I jumped on a plane and I am now in London in a very small podcast studio. It's off an alley and I'm excited because I'm talking to just a phenomenal force in my life. And I think in many people's lifetime. And this is bucket list for me. Now I'm going to reveal who it is. Now, if Gourley were here or Sona did laugh and say, no, it's the episode is marked with the person's name. People already know you're being stupid, but I'm old fashioned. And so I'm going to pretend you don't know who I'm talking about. My guest today is a rock and roll legend and cultural icon who has spent six decades as the front man of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, The Rolling Stones. Their new album, Foreign Tongues, is out now. I love this album, and I think you have to check it out. It's amazing. This guy's amazing. I'm absolutely honored that he is joining me today. Mick Jagger, welcome. A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling around the world shooting my travel show, and I heard you were going to get a phone call from Mick Jagger. Now, we had met briefly backstage at the Oscars, but we didn't really know each other. The next thing I know, you're calling me, and we're having a chat about this event you asked me to do in Brooklyn to help launch. it's the press launch of the new album foreign tongues and it was a great day for me because i'm a massive fan of course i said yes i asked for money they said there's no money they said there's no money that's there was nothing no money that's terrible yeah and i said i'm just uh and then i apologize for that i thought they

were paying hundreds of thousands for doing this yeah yeah it's my going right yeah yeah exactly

i would have said my going rate is i was uh i was like chuck berry i wanted a hundred thousand dollars in a briefcase before i went on and so um it was a fantastic experience and i got to be with you keith ronnie yes now uh i don't think i had met ronnie before he's a lovely guy yes he is tells a lot of very bad jokes terrible jokes and the only worst joke teller is bill wyman

but who's not in the band anymore but he could be co-opted to tell his terrible jokes versus ronnie ronnie versus bill they're terrible jokes just awful and i at one point and i don't know and

it's it's uh you know it's ronnie wood he's a legend and a lovely legendary comedian a legendary comedian but at one point i said ronnie you've got to stop and i had known him an hour at that point. But we had a lovely time and I had some observations about that day, which is leading up to it, you and I had several phone calls. You were really going over all the details. And then when we got to the event, at one point you were looking out at the audience to check them. And I looked back at Keith and I said, was this Mick in 1962? And he said, yes. And this, I get the sense that In a way, you've always been the organizer, the manager, the guy who's keeping it together. Is that a fair thing to say?

I guess so. I mean, sometimes I was called a control freak, but I'm not a control freak at all. I like to delegate. You know, the thing about doing this kind of thing is you delegate these big jobs. You know, I never organized that thing that we did. Not really. But what did I do? I approved the place. you know i thought that you would be a great person to do it and were you disappointed i was so happy it went off really well it was very funny you had it was very fun you handled keith's

microphone technique perfectly i was worried the minute they gave you guys handheld microphones at this event in in brooklyn you think well that can get dodgy yeah and then keith did a thing where the microphone was by his mouth and when i'd ask him a question he would start to answer and the the microphone would drift away from his mouth until the point where I was still holding it. This is not drifting away in the air on its own. No, no, no. He's holding it, but it's drifting. His arm is drifting away from his body, but we got a laugh out of it. It was fun. Uh, he was lovely, but I, I did get the sense that not that I didn't see control freak when I saw you, but I

saw someone who is very interested in the details. Yeah. I mean, this looking through to see, well, you know i'd seen the room empty but you you've got to see the room full you know what's what kind of people are there what you know how many people are there what are they what does the room feel like i think that's important i'm sure you if you when you go on and do things with a live audience you know uh you you want to fill the room you know a little bit you do want to fill the room because how your behavior would be you know how how the audience is going to react i mean so i

think all that sort of stuff's really important what surprised me for very first time i met you you mentioned the oscars i don't know if you remember but you came up behind me and i'm looking at my notes what do i have to do next we're halfway through the show and i feel someone jabbing me in the back saying how's the crowd how's the crowd how's the crowd in kind of a funny american accent how's the crowd how's the crowd and i turn around it's you and i said mick you don't care how the crowd is you're mick jagger and you said oh i do yeah because because anyone else in the world who's not you would say, what's he worried about? People are delighted to see you.

You're this. Yeah. You're not worried about it, but you want information because you're only on that. You're on the whole show. Good luck. Good luck with that. I mean, you know, that's a difficult job. Yeah. And you have to roll with the punches and there's all kinds of weird things happening at the Oscars. People jump on stage and punch people. You know, who knows what's going to happen? You know, I mean, I'm a presenter, you know, which is the lowest category of people appearing on the Oscars. And usually they read something off the teleprompter, which is just not funny. And it's not interesting. And they're obviously reading it. And then, you know, it just isn't. So I just rewrote all the stuff they asked me to say. And I wanted to make it into something that was my words. Organic to you. Yeah, it's personal to me, you know. Yeah. so all these little things you do uh you know because the good thing about it was i'd done a rehearsal so you walk onto the stage and they hit the weird also weird they have the very famous people in cardboard cutouts remember that in the rehearsal yes so there's the timothy chalamet cut out he's just in front of you so i was going to make a bob dylan riff so i knew i knew that he was there because he's i'm staring at the car we'll cut out of him scarlett johansson's there whatever yeah whatever well so so that it was good to do the rehearsal which was about five minutes yeah and then and then then i shared what was not a dressing room was an office didn't have any uh dressing room things with uh neil young yeah who who wasn't on the show. And then he just hangs out in dressing rooms. And I said, yeah, it's just hanging out. And I'm going, that's Neil Young over in this office. Hi, Neil. And I realized Daryl Hannah was also a presenter. Oh, there you go. There you go. That was the deal. And so Daryl Hannah,

Neil Young, and I shared an office. It's so funny how you've achieved this level that's hard to comprehend where I would think you can be very much in control of what you want to do and how you want to do it. Whenever I see footage of the early Stone shows when you've really guys have hit and you're in Denmark, you're trying to perform. Kids are running up on stage and you're singing and people are jumping on your back. Yeah. Girls are jumping on you. And so half of your time is spent getting out of a headlock.

Yeah.

While singing. Yeah, while singing.

And dancing.

And dancing.

All at the same time. Yeah. Those are the days.

Do those moments occur to you? Now, every now and then, because things are so locked down now in a great way. Yeah. But those early days were just so chaotic. There was chaotic.

There was no, see, the thing was in those days, there wasn't any organization for these concerts. Right. And the organization was minimal. There was no really security. So if there was security, it was the local police. And the local police had no experience of a concert audience. They'd probably never done it before. and in some places like we used to play in like the west coast in little places and the police would come out and there would be like 14 year old girls and they bang them on the heads with their nightsticks that was their solution i mean it's like huh we took care of it these could be your daughters yeah maybe they are and it was the same in europe yeah i mean they would just throw them, you know, out of the door bodily. I mean, it was just chaotic.

The other thing that strikes me, which has changed so much, not to embarrass you, but you reach this iconic level where if someone were to make a short list of who are the greatest entertainers of the 20th, early 21st century, you know, and I'm including everybody, you're And Al Jolson, you know, Michael Jackson, you're on the very, very short list of this iconic performer. I want to see Al Jolson and Michael Jackson as a duo. Al Jolson, like, and then moonwalks right past him. Exactly. That's a good one. But, you know, you're in this position and the press, I don't think people today understand how hostile the media was towards all pop groups. But then specifically, they just decided and it was kind of a press creation. Yeah. Rolling Stone, they're bad. They're punks before punks. They were bad.

Rolling Stone's bad, dirty. Rolling Stone's, you know, scary, shouldn't be allowed. And yeah, that's just some press stuff. But people were actually, obviously people were really welcoming in most places, but there was a group that were really not welcoming, but maybe they didn't even know who you were, but they would just shout names at you. They didn't know who you were. They would just shout names. So it was very polarized in a kind of modern way. Just the look of you, which when you look at the pictures is pretty normal. it's tame now very tame but but in those days it wasn't so it's hard to it's that's why it's so hard to imagine because you we look pretty normal and you know and but not for those people that's you know especially in the u.s when we first went there like say 64 in the in the outside of new york and la that that that was that was they we were like uh freaks for them yeah it was also i

I was always careful in my comedy career a new band would come up or a new performer who looked strange and my writers would say let's make fun of that person I would say I do not want to be because this footage doesn't age well no if this person goes on to be iconic yeah um and this is when you know bands were coming on my show for the first time there'd be their first tv experience would be a no doubt or a green day yeah and I'm glad that I was welcoming and didn't make any jokes because they would look so stupid now in the 1960s all performers decided that these long haired freaks yeah from england were a passing fad yeah they had no conception that this was going to be the music that dominated people's lives for the next 60 years they didn't

know well no one knew that no one knew that and so it was easy for them to be to be patronizing and to make a joke of it because it's an easy cheap gag you know yeah i mean that dean martin did it you know like at the famously um um ed sullivan we went on a lot he he didn't do it he but ed sullivan didn't do anything really he just he was that was a different kind of person but he didn't i don't think ed so i think ed sullivan knew that he got good ratings because when the beatles went on ed sullivan whatever ed sullivan thought of the beatles that he got great ratings when they went on so he knew what you're saying that i bet there's no point in me making fun of them because who knows what's going to happen yeah you know but i mean there were a lot of exceptions there were talk show people say maybe local i can't remember all their names now like mike wallace and all they had they were willing to have serious conversations with you they respected you a bit more there were others that did not and you didn't do their shows so yeah

it's just interesting now i think i don't think people today understand not that they should but the environment that you guys were in, in 64, 65, 66, actually all through most of the 60s.

It was a hostile environment, particularly in America. I'm not only America. I mean, we can't, we're not, I'm not blaming America for being the only, there were hostile in England, there was a lot of hostility, but America was not really ready for this stuff. Really, they weren't, you know, and, and, and, and obviously things change. I mean, it didn't take long when you think about it in, in years, like you said, 64 by Nick, by 66, it was changed a lot, you know,

so two or three years. Yeah. There are a lot of singers or entertainers that get to this point in their career and they get very nostalgic and they start singing or writing a lot about their childhood or looking back. And what I find interesting is you do not strike me as a nostalgic writer. You're very interested in what's happening right now. I think that's a and I say that in a very positive way. When I listen to foreign tongues, there's no really looking back. This is music that you made for someone to listen to in 2026, 27. And there's no leaning on this vast history that you have is that fair to say yeah it's true that's not really

i don't really do that i mean i'm quite happy to talk about like we just talked about yeah yeah you know the early days the early days of going to the united states or going to holland or denmark or whatever you talked about i'm quite happy to remember that if i can it's hard it's so long ago it's hard to really remember but no i mean i'm not drawing in this foreign tongues album lyrically i'm not drawing on nostalgia at all i mean obviously you're drawing on past experiences but though it might be recent past experiences there could be any but they're not referred back and musically speaking every time andy what the producer would make a producer's always what like references so it which is unstable because you you go like this is a bit like this song you did previously it's to explain to the musicians to their relatability to the song yeah it's it's a bit it's a think of it a bit like this you know and then that's fine but then i said to add a bit yeah but don't don't make references musically don't there was one track i think mr charm yeah and at the end of it he said well he it could be a bit more like jumping jack flash at the end i said no i just not anything like that and i don't want you to refer to it and i mean we didn't have an argument about it so i said just don't make it like that we're not going to encourage anyone to overdub guitars like that and so i didn't want any references to that if you know me so so um and i've heard that paul mccartney's record has some of this that you're talking about i i haven't yet got around to listening to it and i apologize paul but i will i will do because it's been talked about a lot and i've heard it's very good but i haven't listened to it yet so um now in the

old days would you have gotten a track by the beatles or a competitor right away and listen to it listen to that record the minute you could yeah probably you're beyond all that well i mean

i just i'm not beyond it i i just keep forgetting i'm being so busy i just keep forgetting to listen to it yeah um i've been running around doing promotion and sure and and i just haven't been listening to current music very much i could sing it to you yeah okay i'm ready how's it go what's the lead track

what's it called what's it called do you remember what it's called what's the lead

i don't remember oh come on no he's what is it dungeon alley dungeon i've heard this this is this i've heard the title yeah what does that refer to i think it's a street in liverpool that was like an alley that led down to so he's singing about liverpool he's looking back

um so on hanny diamonds on the on the track called whole whole wide world i did refer back a little bit to student digs days and everything. But it was a pretty oblique reference. But it was there. There was two lines about it.

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Yeah.

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Hey, well, cheers to you. I appreciate that.

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with BetterHelp, sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash Conan. That's betterhelp.com slash Conan. Listening to the album, you mentioned Mr. Charm, so I'm going to bring this up. I don't think any singer does attitude better than you. It's so interesting because I will do another reference, But in Mr. Charm, I get some of the, this is not a reference, but some of the delicious kind of almost oily disdain that you can hear in like Simply for the Devil. There's a little bit of, there's this great attitude and you do it in, I'm a big fan of the show Slow Horses. You do the theme song. I love the attitude that you possess and inhabit when you're singing that song. which one to mr charm well mr charm but also the the slow the slow horses theme yeah which is you know it it it's very kind of almost burlesque it's called strange game strange game yeah i think i saw you once said in an interview that yes the lyrics are important but really it's the sound yeah and you have this i can tell you think a lot about what is this going to sound like because some very strange things in like doo-wop music sounded great but when you look at what it says it's rubbish it's just absolute rubbish and it's the sound and i think of so many stones records and so many of your vocalizations as it's a great shattered or you know and and on this record there's a great attitude and a sound to what you are singing that i think adds a lot to the lyrics

i think in attitudes though you know it's like it's acting really because you you you're you're taking on the character of the of the song you know and when you do a love song say like back in your life or the jilted lover you're playing the jilted lover so obviously that's happened to you before but i mean so but that's a whole different attitude it's a different person you you know you so when you come to do i mean it's easier in the recording studio because you don't have to do one after another yeah yeah and on stage it's but you have to switch personas you know quickly you know you go from symphony of daryl to a ballad you know whatever but you don't

do you almost want a screen to come down for a second so you can inhabit and you want to inhabit

another space you know so when you get into a song in the studios but remember you haven't done that song that many times yeah you know you might have done a demo of it in that case in this case of mr charm i did a demo so i i wasn't like walking into doing a song that i didn't know i knew it but i had to make it much better than the demo you know right and i rewrote the lyrics and everything and then you you start to get into the character of this uh and and like in that song there's two attitudes so there's the verse attitude where you're kind of trying to be beguiling and then there's the chorus attitude where you're kind of throwing something else away you know saying life's too short just make money and what so it's a slightly different different attitude then you come back to the verse where you're then you know throwing sort of these kind of scattered gun images out you know in what you hope is a kind of interesting way

i listened to this album i listened to it a bunch because i really like it and uh i noticed that yes i can see obviously you guys famously start as a blues band but there's blues in here there's rock and roll there's also country again i think you've always been interested in many different genres of kind of music and i was very interested in the country aspect of the album because i know that if i didn't know any better i think well country couldn't have been an influence but it

was an influence country was a huge influence from on well i think on every uh most english musicians of that period don't forget these songs were also a lot of these country songs were big hits yeah they were like top 10 hits like as they were in the u.s you know but you know people like eddie arnold and all these people they had huge hits they were pop hits even though they were country songs and then you got on to people like george jones and you they were played on the radio so this wasn't obscure you know the blues was more obscure these were hits uh the everly brothers were country yeah i mean really yeah i mean they were pop but there's still country and and johnny cash johnny cash had a number one record with a ballad of a teenage queen yeah so as soon as you heard that and you liked johnny cash you would explore more johnny cash and you'd realize that He was a country singer.

This is what you realize when you listen to 1954 Elvis' Sun Session.

It's a click and a half away from country. It's rockabilly. Yeah. But if you slowed it down a little bit. Yes. The instrumentation, it's so close to country.

So close, but he was covering rhythm and blues songs a lot of times. I mean, of course, he did standards like Blue Moon in the same period we're talking about. Obviously, these songs like That's All Right Mama, which is, I think, the first one he did.

He did the first one, yeah.

And that was an R&B song, and then he did Hound Dog, that was an R&B song. These were all R&B songs. So even though we say, yeah, he's so country, he was covering R&B in a kind of slightly different country way.

Yeah.

I'm not sure. I'm not a great Elvis student, but I mean, I love Elvis and all that, but did he really do country music as we know it?

No, probably more, well, gospel. He loved gospel. Yes, gospel he did. Love gospel, but you can see that, you're right, those early influences, I think it's a gumbo. Yeah, absolutely. Country is part of his makeup, but much more so gospel, rhythm and blues. You never met, did you meet Elvis?

No, I never met Elvis. That's incredible to me. You know why? I'll tell you why. The Daily Mirror, an English tabloid that still exists, you always did publicity with the Daily Mirror, and the Beatles did it. There was a showbiz journalist, I can't remember his name, very famous at the time. And he took the Beatles in Los Angeles to visit with Elvis.

Yeah.

And there's pictures of this. Yeah. So they went up to Elvis' house and his pool.

They walked in and he was playing bass. Was he? Watching TV, playing bass. Okay. But they were all high. The Beatles were high. And none of them have their story straight. None of them can remember. They don't remember anything.

I remember John telling me, you should never meet your heroes. I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you. That's fascinating, yeah. And so I didn't. I took John Zafice. Yeah. It was really stupid of me, really. But I mean, I would love to have met Elvis. Why I take John Zafice? But I mean, at the time, it seemed to ring. Well, I mean, so.

No, no. He famously, in the 64 tour, he kept saying, the minute they got to America, John kept saying, where's Elvis? Where's Elvis? Where's Elvis? That's the only person he wanted to meet. Then they met Elvis and in Bel Air at his house, John walked out and said, where's Elvis? Because that was not the guy he wanted to meet. He disappointed him.

And he told me all this story more than once. And so it sort of put me off. So I wanted to keep my Elvis to myself, my version of Elvis. And so I didn't want my version of Elvis shattered like John's was. But maybe my Elvis version would have been different. Well, I have to tell you,

I've always wanted to sit and talk with you and this is a massive disappointment.

Yeah, I can imagine it is. Here we are, stuck in this little tiny room in West London.

I'm going to leave and go, where's Mick Jagger?

And yeah, and I was enjoying being in Casablanca. This is crap.

I did have a good time in Casablanca. And there's something about this album, Foreign Tongues, I was thinking, you're not nostalgic. I can feel an urgency. there's a sense that you guys got into the studio i know you made it very quickly and what i'm very impressed by is it almost feels like you've got something to prove which you don't but that's how it feels a lot of these songs really feel like you're having a great time but let's get this

shit and get it right is that is that fair yeah it's fair i mean but that's that's how most operandi for when we did Hackney Diamonds yeah you know it was a way of working so the previous way with the bands obviously had a lot of ways of working in a studio um and and when we did Hackney Diamonds that was a different way of doing it it's like okay we got these songs we got them prepped a bit at least they're done um we're not writing songs in the studio which a lot of bands do we used to do if something comes up in the studio fantastic and it this might change this song may change completely and utterly but you have an idea and we're going to plow through them we're not going to hang around we're not going to wait we're not going to play them all day we're going to do them for a couple of hours and we'll move on to the next one and if we'll come back the next day we might do it again or might leave come back next week and do it again so we're always moving ahead always plowing ahead so there's no time for too much uh self-analysis of whether it's the songs any good where the performances we'll find out because when it's all finished we'll we'll listen to them all you know and see what have we got after we've done four weeks what have we got left well what's good which are your favorites which ones is there one you don't like is is this does this

all stand up because we want to set the bar high because we don't want to have we said in Hatton's Armies this week we don't want to any filler we want to set the bar high so every track has to have something special about it okay some might be you might be your favorites but doesn't mean so that the other ones don't have something to say well we're often twisted I love in the

stars obviously you guys knew we've got something really great here yeah love the video yeah that's stars is fantastic um you guys sort of reimagined as your younger selves and it's it's it's great it's fantastic it was only ai with the faces yeah everything else is real and you told me that at one point they got a little screwed up because you thought ronnie wood doesn't look right they're young young you looks great young keith looks great they they made sort of they

tried to make a faces era ronnie wood no i said to i said to we were talking with this um the lady that i'm working with on the video so they're doing this ai and i said stop it at 3 18 i was just we're on that we're on zoom i said stop it at 3 18 i said that's jeff beck ronnie that's not your guy your guy is he's referring to jeff he's got the right because the thing was the thing was that ronnie was in a band with jeff beck yes so so they might have gone back to this footage and said i don't please don't bother me about this i know exactly who these people are and he got and it looked exactly like jeff beck so we had jeff beck in the band for a minute there that was interesting so i said now you've got to change it to ronnie because the keith and i images were taken from sympathy for the devil yeah most mostly not it's not quite that simple but godard who made the he made a movie of course someone famous a famous french

film director yeah and i know at the time you were thinking why is he shooting us creating and now it's a great document yeah it's the only one like that it's the only one exists from the 60s you know what's another great piece of footage is there's this great footage of you and keith you've just come back from recording in muscle shoals you go into a room i'm sure you've seen this you walk into a room and you've got the demo for, I think it's Brown Sugar. You put it on and you're listening to it. It's not out yet, but you're listening to it and you see you start to, both of you start to groove to this thing and you start strutting around the room and you have the same reaction that later on everybody's going to have, which is this is a great track, but it's you guys hearing it for the first time. Yeah. You're hearing the rough mix or something. Yeah.

Is that giving shelter by the Maisel brothers? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's just a great

moment. You as a fan of the Rolling Stones. Yeah, I can be that. Yeah. I can also be their

severest critic. Is that true? Well, you kind of have to be sometimes, you know, I mean, and sometimes you're wrong. You know, you can be very wrong because you're not a very good critic of your own work one one is not a good critic of one's own work really um but you know you are the first person that hears it after all in in in reality I have to ask you I mentioned

this when we talked in Brooklyn but I have to bring it up your voice sounds as good as ever there are times where I think it's better than ever it's uh defies logic but I know that you are an extremely disciplined guy about your health and taking care of yourself but you listen to this album and i think this is a this is a 28 year old singer it's really amazing oh that's that's very kind of you to say that uh and you're doing falsetto stuff well that's pretty easy i find

that kind of easy that's not i mean people have given me lots of compliments about that and to be honest that's the and i appreciate the kindness but that that some of the other songs are much more difficult than that that one's relatively easy to do um i learned i learned falsetto singing very early on in the stone's career when i listened to don covey he was a soul singer um and he was singing this song called have mercy don covey also wrote chain of fools for he was a songwriter as well and i met him a few occasions anyway but on his song have mercy he sings only in falsetto so then i copied that and we covered that song i mean i'm sure my version is useless compared to her i'm i was practicing um but that kind of falsetto singing is relatively easy because you never change from falsetto back into your regular voice that's the difficult thing to do the difficult thing is going in and out of falsetto yes yes so i can't really do that very well like the person that does that brilliantly is al green yeah so if you listen to al green and i was last month I was I put on this Al Green record and I hadn't heard it for a while and I said I was analyzing what he was doing with his vocal and he was so he's going for a set and then he's going back in the same line he's going back to his regular voice and then he's going back for said I said okay I see so I've got to do that too I have to learn how to do that and so I just sang along with Al Green trying to do it I mean it's not easy but it's possible I learned this a long

time ago, which is very few people sort of in your caliber, but I remembered once getting to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform. And then I got taken backstage because my drummer for years, Max Weinberg, is Bruce's drummer. He took me backstage and I got to hang out with Bruce a little bit just after the show. And he at one point had been trying to, had been singing this falsetto. And I said, that was great. I love that part. And I didn't realize you could do that. And he said yeah i'm really working on it and i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying and i thought this is fascinating i see the same thing with you everyone else would assume that you've got nothing left left to try but of course you do those are things you can do and you are still thinking yeah i'm gonna listen to this al green record and okay what's he doing here and i want

to work on that yeah because i haven't i haven't mastered that so in the studio so i do it like a song like um jealous lover yeah so i so i can sing the falsetto part in the verse first and then then the chorus is in full voice and then you layer it with lots of harmonies that i did in falsetto and full voice but then i'm not really doing now green thing i'm doing one set in falsetto and one set in full voice you know so so i mean it's not cheating that's just this is the way i

layered it but i do think there's something about we all have our heroes it's your attempt to be your hero that fails but and in the failing of being exactly like the person you idolize you create something something new comes out yeah and i can't be that i mean you guys were listening to blues and saying we want to do that and it's of course it's different you're from

dartford yeah exactly it's going to be different i can't be howling wolf you know i mean but but you do how i'm never trying to sound like nobody can nobody sounds like how not even i've never heard anyone but yeah you're absolutely right you you you while you're copying people you create

something new you know we were talking about how so much has changed one of the things that this first wave of uh pop stars in the 60s faced was well you can't be doing this when you're not in your 20s. Once you're, you know, once you're 28, 29, this is for young kids to do. You can't be doing this. There's a great clip I saw. It's backstage. It might be Madison Square Garden. I think it's late 60s. Dick Cavett's talking to you and he said, do you think you'll be doing this when you're 60? And he said, and you have a cane? And you said, sure. You said a lot of, you said Marlene Dietrich is still out there and she's amazing. And I thought that's such a great answer because i think the standard answer then was well of course not of course not

but you said why not yeah why not well yeah that there had been i mean see the thing about rock music is associated with always associated with youth it's the it was the music of rebellious youth so to speak and um i mean most rock bands are young and you want there to be young rock bands and you know it sort of comes and goes and there's been a slight revival of it now but you thought that that once you're out of the flush of youth you wouldn't continue but rock music kind of evolved i suppose in a way as well and it also remained the popular music with the with the same group of people that were in your same age group they still liked it so they didn't move on to some other music as they might have moved on but they still kept a a a thing for their youth you know those yeah so and you obviously so but yeah i don't know i mean there were there were people i mean frank sinatra was still a big star and he was when he was old but it's a different kind of music you don't need quite as much energy to do frank sinatra as you need to do the sex pistols i mean or the ramones or to do hit me in the head what i think i mean

i can't i'm hard-pressed to think of anybody who expends more energy on stage still as you you're in constant motion i couldn't do that i couldn't do that for 15 minutes uh let alone a two-hour plus show so you know i i the stamina that you have i know you work at it i'm wondering does any of that come from the fact that your dad was a a gymnast and a physical fitness Let's go. guy did you think that you grew up a little bit with that like I got to take care of myself yeah

he kept telling me you have to take care of yourself you know if you don't take serious self you're going to be any point at someone like who was 55 who fat and smoking in an armchair yeah yeah you'd be like your uncle so-and-so yeah yeah and you know you don't want to be like that also no no I don't yeah but it goes in you know when you're young that coat that sticks with you

so yeah i would have been i don't know 12 years old i think when elvis turned 40 and the national inquirer was just vicious yeah about elvis turning 40 because he was the real first wave of rock and roll absolutely so he's you know um he's another generation older than you guys and he was the first one to get isn't this absurd that this man is still doing this at 40 yeah which now nobody

He wasn't in very good shape. No, he wasn't. That was the thing. I mean, and then he got back in shape. He did a great comeback thing where he looked amazing. But for a while, why he was such a figure of fun, I'm not saying the National Enquirer is the paper of record, but why everyone used to take the mick out of him was because he did get overweight, and he obviously wasn't very fit. And he wasn't very old. i mean this is all and how old was he when he died he was 42 yeah you know which we now we

consider quite young for well this is how screwed up things are i was in high school when i would have been 17 16 or 17 when my sister kate knocked on the door and she opened the door it was in the morning in 1980 and she told me john lennon was shot and died and i was lying in bed and i said what? And she said, yes. And I said, how old was he? And she said, 40. And I said, well, at least he had a long life. That's what I said. Now I am 63 now. I don't think 40 is a long life. I don't think 63 is a long life, but that was my perspective then.

Yeah, of course. Just insane. Yeah. Well, today, I know this is not going out until later, but David Hockney just died. yeah and he was creating experimental art he was 87 years old and he never stopped never stopped he never stopped not just repeating himself he didn't repeat himself that was the great thing he he he he just carried on you know trying different things yeah and trying different ways of expressing himself and foreign tongues album is that you i mean he was amazing and 87 i mean he was still painting this year

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i have to ask you is the harmonica that i hear on foreign tongues album is that you yeah it's okay ronnie plays harmonica but he doesn't play on this album well also there's there's a great quote a keith quote keith is a huge admirer of your harmonica playing and he said that is that's the that's the you know there are many mick can assume many forms that is he always felt your harmonica playing was the key into that's the core mick jagger that's the apple logo that comes up when you've turned on the computer for the first time as you want harmony

do you think that's close to something true it's kind of true but the thing is you know i think in a funny way uh the the harmonica is an extension of the voice you know because it's a blown instrument and you're we go you're making a wah wah you know it's it's a voice extension thing so i think it's a for a vocalist it's a good extension of of a voice you know so a natural instrument of a voice of course what i like doing is playing punk guitar so that's what i really like doing so so do you ever do open tunings or do you just do you i do both yeah yeah but uh when i do the slashy indie guitars it's sort of six strings and that and ronnie and keith would sort of look at me but i but i do it anyway i do they don't watch you on the guitar every i don't think so but but they've sort of learned to put up with it yeah they've learned to put up with it and you know

i love doing it because i don't know it's harder than that you know yeah it's like this you know

because on some of these fast songs it's like you know like hit me in the head and all that that's it's really slamming you know you have to really slam it i'm not saying ronnie and keith don't islamics to do but when i've written something like that i i think i i always want to be on it you know i always want to be playing guitar on it so that's why i get i mean i love playing harmonica too the harmonica thing was great on the amy winehouse song because i played the harmonica it the horn parts on amy original i played on harmonica so which is a horn part so i played that on harmonica that was a good opportunity

Do you write exclusively on guitar or do you also sit at the piano and write? I do piano and guitar. Piano and guitar.

Piano and guitar. Sometimes I just sing to drum machines, just anything, no instrument, just me singing.

Do you find that you've got to do it early in the morning?

No, I hate doing things early in the morning. I don't think early in the morning is breakfast and read the newspaper.

That's it. Many people have been asking, is there going to be a tour for foreign tongues? and i selfishly would want that because i want to hear these songs live and i know you're going to get me a ticket yeah you guys are saying probably not right away but what do you think do you think it would be maybe in a year is it possible or it's hard to say it's possible i i

think i think i'd love to do it too because i think there's a lot of songs on this album that that would translate into live really good um but having said that you can't really do that many new songs if you do stadium shows they the audience is not that accepting accepting of them you know they want to hear what they're familiar can you clock that when you're trying

something new and you see people head for the bathroom you kind of yeah you do oh you'll get used to it you you'll like it honestly you'll like it yeah but you must have felt that when you were singing some I mean there were many times in your life where you were singing new tracks of course but no one you know Led Zeppelin had to play Stairway to the Heaven for the first time at one point on Long Island and people were like what is this shit yeah right it's always the first

time now but then yeah the more confident you get the more you just we're doing it you know but there's still a limit to how many you can do out percentage wise Yeah.

So you can see someone headed to the bathroom.

Sometimes I can. I don't concentrate on that.

I would only concentrate on it. When someone I'm talking and people are heading to the bathroom, it's all I can think about. And it's, they often, that's when they use the bathroom is when I start talking. I heard you talk about David Bowie once. I think it was when we were having dinner and you were talking about David Bowie at one point and you said an interesting thing, which is we were competitive, but we were also good friends. That's a very hard thing to maintain, but i think you did you guys did that beautifully yeah we were competitive david was so competitive

much more compared i was made competitive by david i mean how so well he was just so competitive that i had to be competitive back you know but he but he would do i mean i mean he he went through a period this david went through all these different yes you know iterations iterations of david there isn't one david bowie there's kind of like a slowly evolving david bowie there's there's jump cuts of you know to another david bowie yeah another style then he's the thin white duke yeah you know when he was doing like gene genie yeah he was very stonesy you know yes that was very stonesy period and so he would come over and play me gene genie you know i've got a you want to listen i said yeah of course i said god you nicked all my things yeah i know man i know but it's like a homage to you it's homage yeah sure yeah yeah it's um but yeah um yeah we could i think john and i were very competitive too john lennon but we're more competitive in being sarcastic yes do you see verbal competitiveness Have you ever seen the video of him and Bob Dylan in the back of the limo? Yes.

I love that. I love that because Bob Dylan is not in good shape. They're in the back of a Rolls Royce. They're driving around London. I think in 65, John's got that acid wit where he's saying, come, come, boy, come, come. Do you suffer from scraggly forehead? He turns it into an aspirin ad because Bob Dylan can't pull it together. No.

Well, that's very much like Don. Did you guys get along? Yeah, we really got along. But, I mean, that was John at his most, you know, he's being very sarcastic with Bob, you know, and Bob's not really coming back with the zingy answers.

No, no, he's impaired and he's not, yeah, he's not.

But it does give you a good illustration because most of the other things you see of John are kind of like short and that's kind of extended sarcasm. Yes. So that was him all the time? Not all the time. He could be sweet. Of course. He could be lovely.

Yeah.

But, you know, he's one of these people that if you say something stupid, he'd pick you up, you know.

He'd clock it right away.

He'd clock it right away, you know. Yeah, but he was very competitive about it. He wasn't competitive about anything else.

You mean just, you think he was most competitive about being funny?

Yeah. Being funny and sarcastic.

Yes.

More so than music. It's a kind of Liverpool thing, I think.

sure i think maybe i'm stereotyping but i think it is you've always been you guys have been great at tour promotion i don't know what you might do for the next tour one of the greatest things you ever did was all get on the back of a flatbed truck drive down fifth avenue singing i believe brown sugar yeah and i'm thinking that takes nerve to drive through uh new york in traffic and and all the press was told you were going to be in this restaurant and then they hear music and they come running out of the restaurant with their pads and their cameras and you guys are on the back of a truck going by that's it which was fantastic i don't know if people do things like

that anymore they don't really um that apparently charlie told me that was a thing that jazz bands did in new york to promote their gigs i think in harlem i think they would get on the back of a truck i think that's where we got it from um i think it might have been charlie's idea yeah um because that was the thing that happened in home and i know you mentioned charlie charlie's

you use a track of charlie's uh in foreign tongues yes it's amazing i know you guys are also readily identifiable by your sounds it's very hard to do on drums but you always know it's charlie yeah it's really incredible yeah he's got two sticks and a drum kit that he doesn't have some keith moon crazy kit with a thousand he's got a standard kit you always know it's him yeah and and the

funny thing is on this track which is really fast rock track you're almost punk you might say and and everyone says you're such a center.

insensitive jazz drama. You know, that was what's so different about him. Well, not on this track.

He's banging it. Yeah. I have to ask you, Oxfordshire pub, as we record this, I think days ago, you walked into an Oxfordshire pub and started singing to people. How did that happen? Were you off your meds? What happened? Yes, I didn't know where I was. I had dinner

at an oxford college i went to an oxford college i was invited to a dinner and uh very interesting people very pleasant lots of nice students and then one of the students that i was talking with said i play mandolin i said that's nice i said uh not the easiest instrument it's i it's i play mandolin i'm i'm going down the road to play with an irish band so do you want to come so i said sure and so i took a couple of people that i was with and the provost of the college and and he took his gown off and got into the pub and and it was a very small pub very friendly people and the the band was doing fiddle pieces and the guy joined in with his mandolin and but no one was singing right so i thought oh well here's a here's an opening you want to sing it

This is my big chance.

This is my chance of pub crawling soon. So I did a song that I'd actually recorded. And then, but I had to rehearse it just mentally because I hadn't sung it in years. And I remember the least three verses.

It's like an old standard, right? It is.

Everyone's done it. I think even Bob Dylan's done it, I found out. Right. But not that I've heard it. But I had to remember at least three verses in my head before I started. So I didn't just launch into it. because the worst thing you can do is launch it into a song and then you've got one verse. And then, hmm.

I would pay to see that happen with you. I'm sorry, I would just love to see it. But it was fun. It's two minutes long, yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that keys into, I think, the main point that I wanted to get across in this interview, which is something that really strikes me in the short time that I've been able to hang out with you, is that you were very much living in the moment, making things in the moment. This album, Foreign Tongues, is of this moment. And you, I mean, sitting at a dinner with you and watching you trying everyone else's food, stealing some of Ronnie's dessert. And I thought you can converse about anything. You're, you know, crazily, deeply red. and you're just fascinated in all kinds of stuff. And I thought, I left my time with you and I thought, I need, this is my new spirit animal. Is Mick Jagger, I want to, I aspire not to be you because that's not going to happen, but to kind of adopt that philosophy about life, which is just bite into it, stay interested.

Yeah. uh delight yourself i think that's like you know i don't think that attitude suits everyone because some people some was you know some of your creativity if you're a creative person let's imagine you will draw on your past you you might draw on something that you had an idea for when you were 25 you might have written a short story when you're in 25 and you didn't publish it and then you realize that that would make a great film script or that would make a novel i could now write now i'm 65 let's say let's say so that's it's not true that that you you can't you you can't draw upon this this whole well of your past and make it into something it's and so you're not you you have to be aware of of your past and but that doesn't mean you live in it and you know you feel of course i'm always asked you know what happened when you did this and it's so long ago and you and you you find yourself like just repeating these stories you know if they're even true anymore yeah you know it's just like a you know footballer in a pub talking about his goal in 1972 you know it's a you don't want to become that and that's a danger so yeah so everyone says live in the moment you know it's just a kind of like a like a kind of fashionable mantra but i mean to a certain extent it's true and i mean i think also when you're writing like these kind of ephemeral pop songs which these this is what this business is You

you've got to stay in the present day. So I was writing a song like Ringing Hollow. You're thinking about the now of what you're living through now, which of course, you never know, could change by the time the record comes out. But you can only write, you can't really look into the future, it's hard. So you just write of the writing of the now, you know, in a song like Divine Intervention, you're writing of the now, of what your feelings are, you know so there's there's a there's a thing that runs through these lyrics of these songs that is definitely of the now and the kind of weird period and we're kind of like it's it's difficult for some people living in this period and and um and and you know there's possibly dangers that you know that that we're all in in some way or other but we're geopolitical dangers or economic dangers um and who knows what else and and we're all a bit we're a little bit um sensitive to them i think people are sensitive to the to these things and so when i'm writing stuff you know i can't help myself but i'm not i'm not setting out to even write it just comes

out yeah it's what's happening right now and uh these are scary times but i have to thank you because you've given me, you and the other lads have given me an enormous amount of joy in my life. Thank you. I'm glad. That's what we're here for. Before I became a bad guitarist, I was a bad drummer. And when I was a kid, I would set up my drum kit in the living room and put on Stones records and try and do what Charlie was doing. And my parents let me do that. And we had neighbors, they were lovely i can't believe i would not let my kids do that i would i would smash the kit but you've given me enormous joy um lovely getting to know you uh and talk to you and you're one of my favorite conversations i've been talking to people non-stop for 32 years and you're one of

my favorite people that's very nice i hope the conversation today we we covered a few of them we got we got so much we didn't talk about your hillbilly guitar playing much and your guitar collection yeah we may have mentioned that on these i think we cast before no we we uh we

talked about it at dinner you we did we got into my fascination with rockabilly yes and um wanting to sing and and funny keith heard me do ronnie hawkins a version of ronnie hawkins 40 days where i do it twice as fast as ronnie hawkins and keith said you sound like a fucking auctioneer but um yeah this is one of the joys of my life and i'm so uh delighted that we were able to get together yeah really and foreign tongues uh please when you get a moment tour with this because i really want to hear these songs live yeah me too all right i want to do it

thanks so much nice to talk to you

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