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Mick Jagger reacted to comedian John Mulaney saying that the Rolling Stones frontman was not “nice” when they worked together on Saturday Night Live.
“A lot of people in show business only hang around with people in show business, because they’ve got something in common, they can relate to each other, and you get disassociated from what people might call ‘real life,’” Jagger, 82, admitted to the New York Times Magazine in an interview published
In a 2019 comedy special, Mulaney, 43, recounted his experience as an SNL writer pitching sketches to Jagger, who has been a frequent guest on the comedy show and is a close friend of producer Lorne Michaels.
“My friends were all like, ‘Is he nice?’ No. Or maybe he is, for his version of life because he has a very different life,” Mulaney said in his Kid Gorgeous at Radio City special. “He’s played to stadiums of 20,000 people cheering for him like he’s a god for 50 years. That must change you as a person.”
Mulaney admitted, “If you do that for 50 years, you’re never again gonna be like, ‘Um, does anyone have a laptop charger I could borrow?’ You know that bulls*** way we all have to talk to get through life?”
Jagger told the New York Times Magazine that he “never saw” Mulaney’s comedy special, though he agreed he had a different perspective than most people.
“Obviously, it’s not normal,” he said of his lavish lifestyle. “It is not like most people’s lives. It does affect you. You can become disassociated.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that he has tried to actively “fight against” becoming alienated from the public over the years.
“I mean, you do fight against it. It’s a conscious effort,” he said.
Asked how he tries to stay in touch with people, Jagger explained, “It’s quite easy, really. You go out and walk on the street on your own and do normal things, go and buy The New York Times. But, nevertheless, that’s only temporary because psychologically your actual state of mind is permanently damaged.”
“Your late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because it’s a big ego trip, and you have to have a huge ego to do this,” the rocker went on. “People that do this that don’t have huge egos have huge problems because they have to manufacture a completely different [personality]. I have a friend whose standing joke is that I behave at a dinner party like I behave onstage.”
Jagger insisted that he’d learned how to switch off his bombastic stage persona.
“I think it comes with age. You’ve heard all these stories about method actors,” he said. “They take it to the absolute extreme, so they’re like the character all the time, and then after the movie’s over, they’re still in character. It takes a long time to slough off the character. So which character do you go back to? Is he always going to carry some of that character in his ‘true’ character, whatever that is?”
He concluded, “This is the show business dichotomy and it’s something you learn to live with, and you always hope that you’re a so-called normal person underneath.”
Jagger is still going strong as he enters his mid-80s, with the Rolling Stones having released their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, earlier this month. The star-studded record features the Stones collaborating with fellow rock god Paul McCartney, pop star Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, among many others.
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