The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [160]
Which ones?
People don’t know that Keith wasn’t there making it. All the stuff like “Moonlight Mile,” “Sway.” These tracks are a bit obscure, but they are liked by people that like the Rolling Stones. It’s me and [Mick] playing off each other—another feeling completely, because he’s following my vocal lines and then extemporizing on them during the solos. That’s something Jeff Beck, to a certain extent, can do: a guitar player that just plays very careful lead lines and listens to what his vocalist is doing.
In the mid-Eighties, when the Stones were not working together, did you and Keith talk?
Hardly at all.
A little while ago, Keith described your relationship like this to me: “We can’t even get divorced. I wanted to kill him.” Did you feel you were trapped in this marriage?
No. You’re not trapped. We were friends before we were in a band, so it’s more complicated, but I don’t see it as a marriage. They’re quite different, a band and a marriage.
How did you patch it up?
What actually happened was, we had a meeting to plan the tour, and as far as I was concerned, it was very easy. At the time [1989], everyone was asking [whispers], “Wow, what was it like? What happened? How did it all work?” It was a nonevent. What could have been a lot of name-calling, wasn’t. I think everyone just decided that we’d done all that. Of course, we had to work out what the modus vivendi was for everybody, because we were planning a very different kind of tour. Everyone had to realize that they were in a new kind of world. We had to invent new rules. It was bigger business, more efficient than previous tours, than the Seventies drug tours. We were all gonna be on time at the shows. Everyone realized they had to pull their weight, and everyone had a role to play, and they were all up for doing it.
Can you describe the time you spent in Barbados with Keith, deciding if you could put this together?
Keith and I and [financial adviser] Rupert [Lowenstein] had a small meeting first and talked about business. We were in a hotel with the sea crashing outside and the sun shining and drinks, talking about all the money we’re gonna get and how great it was gonna be, and then we bring everyone else in and talk about it.
So that was your reconciliation with Keith? Was there any talk of putting your heads together and airing issues?
No, and I’m glad we didn’t do that, because it could have gone on for weeks. It was better that we just get on with the job. Of course, we had to revisit things afterward.
Charlie said to me, “I don’t think you can come between Mick and Keith—they’re family. You can only go so far, and then you hit an invisible wall. They don’t want anyone in there.”
Well, it sounds like one of the wives talking, doesn’t it? I remember Bianca [Jagger] saying a very similar thing. But if that’s what he thinks, that’s what he thinks. It’s funny he thinks that. I don’t know why he should say that. I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.
In front of you and Keith?
Or just in front of me. They think they’re gonna go back to a period where people would jump down their throats for having an opinion. Drug use makes you snappy, and you get very bad-tempered and have terrible hangovers.
One more quote. Keith says, “Mick clams up all the time. He keeps a lot inside. It was the way he was brought up. Just being Mick Jagger at eighteen or nineteen, a star, gives him reason to protect what space is left.”
I think it’s very important that you have at least some sort of inner thing you don’t talk about. That’s why I find it distasteful when all these pop stars talk about their habits. But if that’s what they need to do to get rid of them, fine. But I always found it boring. For some people