Home Music Music Lists

Mick Jagger’s 80 Wildest, Coolest, Most Outrageous Moments

Happy 80th birthday to a man of wealth and taste

Mick Jagger

PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATION BY KMAZUR/WIREIMAGE; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS; ADOBE STOCK

WHEN ASKED TO describe Mick Jagger, Keith Richards famously replied, “He’s a nice bunch of guys.” On this birthday, let’s celebrate all of them. There have been so many Mick Jaggers over the years, with their different highs and lows. Here’s a salute to the 80 Coolest Mick Jagger moments: a mere 80 of the countless moments when Mick reminded us all why he’s the ultimate rock star. He’s always been the most visible of rock stars — but also the most mysterious, the most slippery, the one you’ll never figure out no matter how hard you try. This is Mick at his most seductive. Mick at his most decadent. Mick at his most comical. But it’s all Mick defining the outer limits of rock & roll cool. Let it bleed, now and forever.

36

Mick plays Keith on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Mick has brought down the house at 30 Rock so many times: belting “Shattered” in 1978, seeing Jimmy Fallon in the mirror in 2001, karaokeing “Moves Like Jagger” in 2012. But his greatest SNL hit has to be this Weekend Update appearance, with Mike Myers playing Mick and Mick all pirated up to play a zonked-out Keith. It’s a Point/Counterpoint debate on controversial rap lyrics, Ice-T, and censorship. Mick-as-Keith just mumbles incomprehensibly, behind his shades, headband, and cigarette. His best punchline: “Mick, you ignorant slut.”

35

Cops raid the studio while the Stones are recording ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’

Halfway through this tune, you hear a breakdown full of clicking sticks. Why? Because the police just barged into the studio. While the Stones hastily hid their substances, producer Andrew Loog Oldham had to distract the law. “The cops had come in — they were actually in the fuckin’ studio,” he told Rolling Stone in 1987. “And I had to dash out and go, ‘Hey — you’re exactly what we want, man! Could you please get your truncheons out? And I had ‘em standin’ there, bangin’ their truncheons together, while somebody removed the stash from the control room.” Artistic inspiration can come from anywhere.

34

Mick redefines loneliness in ‘2000 Light Years From Home’

Everybody wanted to do shiny, happy drug songs in 1967, greeting the new mind-expanding dawn. But it took Mick to go all the way down, where a psychedelic trip is just another way to feel total cosmic isolation. Inner space, man.

33

Mick redefines pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty girls in ‘Beast of Burden’

A soulful guitar ballad about adult heartache. But the money moment is when Mick licks his lips and slips into his falsetto reverie about “pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty girrrrrls.” It’s like he can’t wait for the chance to transform himself into the prettiest girl of them all. (Pretty-pretty! Such a pretty!) It inspired one of the all-time best Stones covers, from the punk band Wild Flag, with the dueling guitars and falsettos of Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Helium’s Mary Timony.

32

Mick grows a beard

Just trying out his short-lived “hip poetry professor just divorced and seeing what’s out there” look.

31

Mick shaves beard

He never tries that shit again.