Paint him bad

How Mick Jagger was turned into rock’s most dangerous man

By LARRY GETLEN

Jagger

Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue

by Marc Spitz

Gotham Books

The film “A Clockwork Orange” features one of the most brutal rape scenes ever filmed, with Malcolm McDowell gleefully assaulting a woman — and forcing her husband to watch — to the joyfully sounds of “Singing in the Rain.”

As surreal and disturbing as that scene is, imagine it with Mick Jagger in McDowell’s place.

In his new biography of the rock icon, Marc Spitz writes that Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham tried (unsuccessfully) to option the rights to Anthony Burgess’ novel for the band to star in, as part of his ongoing effort to cast them as the most notorious badasses in rock ’n’ roll.

These days, that notion might not seem outrageous. Jagger, now 68, has long been known as one of music’s great hedonists and womanizers. He nabbed Jerry Hall from under Bryan Ferry’s nose; drove musical soulmate Keith Richards deeper into heroin abuse after a dalliance with Richards’ love, Anita Pallenberg; and even stole 18-year-old Mackenzie Phillips from her own father by sending Papa John out to get mayonnaise at a party.

But Spitz’s book posits that while Richards is a true, stick-to-your-guns rebel, Jagger has always been the middle class graduate of the London School of Economics who was willing to bend with the times, and who has long been derisively referred to by Richards as “Brenda.”

The first public perception of Jagger-as-outlaw came late one night after a March 1965 gig at a movie theater. The band stopped at a gas station so bassist Bill Wyman could use the bathroom, and the proprietor, apparently feeling contempt for the longhairs, refused them entry. This allegedly led Jagger to declare, “We’ll piss anywhere, man,” followed by Wyman doing his business on the station’s outside wall.

The band was arrested, the incident received widespread press coverage, and “We’ll piss anywhere, man,” became a slogan of rebellion in the UK. Jagger was now seen as an outlaw, despite, according to Spitz, that the line might have actually been said by Brian Jones.

Oldham also developed the much-repeated ad line for the band, “Would you let your sister go with a Rolling Stone?” The Stones were now rock’s bad boys, and Jagger later said that it was Oldham who “always made sure we were as violent and nasty as possible.”

It was, it seems mostly an act. When Jagger and Richards were busted for drugs in 1967, for instance, Jagger’s toughness was left sorely in doubt. While the pair served only about one day in jail despite being sentenced to three and six months, respectively, Richards told tales of prisoners tossing him cigarettes in solidarity, while Jagger, by contrast, broke down crying the second he saw girlfriend Marianne Faithfull in the visitors’ area.

But however much Jagger was a poseur as an outlaw, his inherent talent and sensuality were enough to overcome even the most conventional bourgeois background.

In October 1964, the band was slated to perform at a concert called The T.A.M.I. (Teen Awards Music International) show, which was to be broadcast from Santa Monica to more than a thousand theaters around the country.

While the lineup was studded with future stars — including the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles — the two biggest at the time were the Stones and James Brown, even though neither were universally revered yet, with Brown still a relative unknown to white audiences.

Jagger and Richards had already seen Brown perform at the Apollo, and had the chance to meet him backstage. While Brown hadn’t known who they were, Jagger and Richards were “practically shaking” while meeting the soul god.

At the T.A.M.I. show, to their horror, the Stones were selected to play last — directly following Brown. Waiting to go on, Jagger, then 21, sat on a folding chair in the shared communal dressing room, staring at his shoes, as Marvin Gaye tried to offer words of comfort.

As they watched James Brown give one of the greatest performances of his career, the Rolling Stones “looked like criminals about to face a firing squad.”

But for all their fear, Jagger’s talent turned out to be too massive to be cowed. Clad in a sweater, “clumsy and frightened,” bouncing on stage like a motorized pogo stick, Jagger exuded the sort of passion and sensuality that most in the crowd had never before experienced.

Brown later wrote in his memoir that when he saw the Rolling Stones that night, he “saw the future.”

But the greatest praise — and perhaps the greatest expression of why Mick Jagger matters — came from Patti Smith, who was in the audience that day, and recalled the concert years later in Creem Magazine.

“I felt thru his pants with optic x-ray. I was doing all my thinking between my legs,” she wrote. “Blind love for my father was the first thing I sacrificed to Mick Jagger. I can tie the Stones in with every sexual release of my late blooming adolescence. Masculinity was no longer measured on the football field.”