Sure he’s a Brit, but being a foreigner never stopped America from celebrating someone who has left an impression on our nation, and few musicians have cut a broader swath than the man we wish a happy 80th birthday on
NATIONAL MICK JAGGER DAY!
When you look up Rock & Roll Star, Mick Jagger is at the top of the list, and has been there for almost 60 years, an amazing run in any artistic discipline, never mind the youth-oriented world of Rock & Roll.
As lead singer of the Rolling Stones and showman extraordinaire, The Mick exploded on the American scene shortly after The Beatles, delivering the goods and then some.
Along with partner in crime Keith Richards (aka The Glimmer Twins), he is also one of the greatest songwriters in Pop history, delivering album after album of great Rock & Roll. Mick, Keith, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts started out in London playing American Blues and Rockabilly music in gritty clubs for little or no money, developing a unique sound that attracted record producer Andrew Loog Oldham.
Oldham encouraged them to write their own songs, and Mick and Keith delivered the soundtrack for balls-to-the-wall Rock & Roll for the next 20 years, getting in trouble with drugs, women and the law along the way, punctuated by the death of Brian Jones shortly after leaving the group in 1969.
Superb guitarist Mick Taylor then joined the band and The Stones delivered perhaps the best Rock & Roll album of all time, Exile on Main Street, as well as Sticky Fingers, Goat’s Head Soup and It’s Only Rock and Roll, most of them produced while the band was in turmoil.
None of this seemed to affect Jagger, who was always the international superstar and bad boy, dating and/or marrying one impossibly beautiful woman after another. Their world tours were important musical events, and Mick and the band always delivered, as good a Rock & Roll band as there ever was.
These days, years removed from his hit-making days, Jagger’s a grandfather, but still dating models and rocking arenas all over the world with the Stones, and remains the Poster Boy for Rock & Roll stars. A few years back Mick became the father to his 8th child, and 4 years ago he overcame open heart surgery before embarking on yet another triumphant world tour that was cut short by the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Now Mick and the Stones are heading out on the road yet again to continue the unfinished business of rocking the post-Covid world.
*Suggested Activities: Turning it up, shaking your ass.