Mick Jagger famous quotes

Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.
-- Mick Jagger

#Dream #Inspiration #Mind

I prefer to live in a rented house. No ties. Nothing around my neck. Just the minimum kind of bare comforts of home.
-- Mick Jagger

#Home #Ties #House

It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.
-- Mick Jagger

#Motivational #Letting Go #Long

It's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Band #Return

A good thing never ends.
-- Mick Jagger

#Good Things #Ends

My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity.
-- Mick Jagger

#Father #Believe #Army

I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five.
-- Mick Jagger

#Stupid #Singing #Complaining

I didn't really like being at college. It wasn't like it was Oxford and had been the most wonderful time of my life. It was really a dull, boring course I was stuck on.
-- Mick Jagger

#College #Oxford #Dull

I believe we should encourage children to sing and play instruments from an early age.
-- Mick Jagger

#Children #Believe #Play

I used to play Saturday night shows with different little groups. If I could get a show, I would do it. I used to do mad things - I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees and roll on the ground - when I was 15,16 years old. And my parents were extremely disapproving of it all. Because it was just not done. This was for very low-class people, remember. Rock & roll singers weren't educated people
-- Mick Jagger

#Night #Rocks #Years

I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.
-- Mick Jagger

#Funny #Tea #Three

I didn't have any inhibitions. I saw Elvis and Gene Vincent, and I thought, "Well, I can do this." And I liked doing it.
-- Mick Jagger

#Saws #Genes #Wells

The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either.
-- Mick Jagger

#Regret #Clever #Past

Drug use makes you snappy, and you get very bad-tempered and have terrible hangovers.
-- Mick Jagger

#Hangover #Drug #Use

Of course we're doing it for the money. We've always done it for the money.
-- Mick Jagger

#Music #Done

You can't be jealous and be a leader.
-- Mick Jagger

#Jealous #Leader #Being Jealous

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.
-- Mick Jagger

#Desire #Trying #Want

You have to realize that everyone in a band is all more or less together, and everyone has their own niche, and some people lead in some ways, and some people lead in others.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Together #Band

He stole my music but he gave me my name.
-- Mick Jagger

#Names

If you're the singer in the band, you always get more attention than anyone else.
-- Mick Jagger

#Singers #Attention #Band

Don’t take life too seriously and always remember: it is just a passing fad.
-- Mick Jagger

#Fads #Remember

I, personally, have a lot of energy, so I don't see it as an immediate problem.
-- Mick Jagger

#Energy #Problem

Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too.
-- Mick Jagger

#Sky #Roots

Thanks to everyone in Israel for the wonderful welcome. It was a great show and we'll remember it forever.
-- Mick Jagger

#Israel #Forever #Thanks

I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, but how boring is that?
-- Mick Jagger

#School #Wish #Kind

The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.
-- Mick Jagger

#Way #Madness #Achieve

I don't think people care about the mechanics of songwriting.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #People #Care

A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #Writing #Feel Good

I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #People #Half

You wake up in the morning and you look at your old spoon, and you say to yourself, 'Mick, it's time to get yourself a new spoon.' And you do.
-- Mick Jagger

#Morning #Spoons #Looks

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.
-- Mick Jagger

#Stars #Thinking #Important

I came into music just because I wanted the bread. It's true. I looked around and this seemed like the only way I was going to get the kind of bread I wanted.
-- Mick Jagger

#Bread #Way #Kind

For some people it's real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself.
-- Mick Jagger

#Real #People #Journalist

I don't want to be a rock star all my life. I couldn't bear to end up like Elvis Presley in Las Vegas with all those housewives and old ladies coming in with their handbags
-- Mick Jagger

#Stars #Rocks #Las Vegas

I like to have a peek, see what the audience is doing during the opening act, because it gives you a clue and gives you a good feeling of where you are - the air can be different in different places.
-- Mick Jagger

#Air #Giving #Feelings

As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.
-- Mick Jagger

#Long #Care #Pages

The Beatles were so big that it's hard for people not alive at the time to realize just how big they were.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Alive #Realizing

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.
-- Mick Jagger

#Keeping Secrets #Secret #Poetic

I don't believe in astrology. It's a lot of crap. I just think that's another thing you should throw out the window. Mysticism. Cheap. It's amazing that people still hang on to that after all these years.
-- Mick Jagger

#Believe #Thinking #Years

You start out playing rock 'n' roll so you can have sex and do drugs, but you end up doing drugs so you can still play rock 'n' roll and have sex.
-- Mick Jagger

#Sex #Play #Rocks

I don't hate journalists. You can't hate a class of people. It's wrong to say that. But I do think they're a bit like poison. Never trust them. You can't trust them as a class of people. It's their job not to be trusted.
-- Mick Jagger

#Jobs #Hate #Thinking

People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you. It's very selfish, but it's understandable.
-- Mick Jagger

#Selfish #People #Want

The music's rehearsed a lot. All people think about is, they think, in rock 'n' roll, they get the music off right and they think it's okay standing, looking macho. Well, it's not. That's boring. If you want to be a performer you've got to do a lot more work than that.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Rocks #People

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #Past #Forget

I'm not the businessman. I don't deal with the business at all. Not anymore. Occasionally, every four years or five years, they tell me I've run out of money, I have to go and make some more.
-- Mick Jagger

#Running #Years #Four

Life's just a cocktail party - on the street.
-- Mick Jagger

#Party #Cocktail Parties #Cocktails

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #Writing #Piano

Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.
-- Mick Jagger

#Anarchy

I don't spend money on anything. I don't collect anything. I don't spend it on furniture.
-- Mick Jagger

#Furniture

Lets drink to the hard working people Lets drink to the salt of the earth
-- Mick Jagger

#Hard Work #People #Earth

Taking drugs on a recreation level is one thing. But taking them while you're working on a stage is, I don't think it was that great. It's the control factor. And the thing about being on stage, you really want to feel that you're sort of in control a lot. It's not a place where you want to be out of control.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Drug #Want

I always think it's better to be not taking drugs or drinking or anything. That's not saying I've never done it because I have. But I sort of learned I think after a while there has been - it didn't take me that long to realize that it wasn't a good thing.
-- Mick Jagger

#Drinking #Thinking #Long

In England they always try out new mobile phones in Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try the legalization of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens.
-- Mick Jagger

#Men #Phones #Drug

Thousands of years people have taken drugs, whether it's alcohol, which was invented about 5,000 years ago. People have been using that. And all kinds of ***** and all these things, tobacco. So all these drugs have been - it seems to be the propensity of human beings to want to use them.
-- Mick Jagger

#Taken #Marijuana #Years

They're so boring. They're so pathetic, all those journalists. Most of them are. Most of those kind that write gossip stuff, and most of it's gossip. Things are just invented about your personal life and you just have to take that. It's bullshit. People believe it, though. They just believe everything they read.
-- Mick Jagger

#Believe #Writing #Gossip

I don't really mind criticism in music or in shows and stuff like that at all. I mean, it doesn't really worry me even if it's like out of place. At least it's relevant.
-- Mick Jagger

#Mean #Worry #Mind

I don't like drugs. I think cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. It's about the most boring drug ever invented.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Drug #Boring

Starting off in music, the purpose of it was not to become like well known on the street and be famous. You know, I didn't even think about that part of being famous. Famous for making records, yes, but famous face in a woman's magazine, I never thought of that. I didn't want that.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Records #Magazines

Killing for ideas is the most dangerous form of killing at all. Being willing to die for your ideas rather than your country is another concept, but dying for an idea, like in religion, is absurd.
-- Mick Jagger

#Country #Ideas #Dying

People have different personalities when they're drunk or take heroin, or whatever drugs.
-- Mick Jagger

#Drunk #People #Personality

It's nice to collect stamps, but if it becomes obsessive, and you start stealing for your stamps, it becomes too much.
-- Mick Jagger

#Nice #Too Much #Stealing

Rock has to absorb other rhythmic forms, because the underlying rhythm of music changes with fashion, and people like to move differently, and the underlying rhythms have to be the ones that people want to dance to.
-- Mick Jagger

#Fashion #Moving #Rocks

I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 - there was a good feeling in the air. It was a very creative period for everyone.
-- Mick Jagger

#Air #Creative #Feelings

I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.
-- Mick Jagger

#Ties #Singers #Too Much

If you're really on some heavily addictive drug, you think about the drug, and everything else is secondary. You try and make everything work, but the drug comes first.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Drug #Trying

Most people in England don't live in the North, and people are snobby in England, so they wanted a band from the South.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #England #Band

I'm interested in feedback and learning what people want. It's a tricky thing for me when I do a set list. You get bored doing the same songs. Let's say we do one ballad in two hours, and it's "Wild Horses." If you say, I'm tired of that, let's try something less well known, and then you're out there stumbling through this song you just relearned at sound check, and you realize people probably want "Wild Horses" instead of this (laughs). You do need to do some songs that aren't so well known. The question is how many? I'm open to people posting their requests.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #Horse #Tired

Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness.
-- Mick Jagger

#Behavior #Narrow Mindedness

I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.
-- Mick Jagger

#Running #Imagination #Songwriting

I was having a bit of trouble. I wasn't in a good relationship. Or I was in too many bad relationships. I had so many girlfriends at that point. None of them seemed to care they weren't pleasing me very much. I was obviously in with the wrong group.
-- Mick Jagger

#Girlfriend #Bad Relationship #Good Relationship

When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #Writing #Play

In England you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.
-- Mick Jagger

#England #Culture #Pretentious

Samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it's also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive - because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it.
-- Mick Jagger

#White #People #Suggestions

People also like partnerships because they can identify with the drama of two people in partnership. They can feed off a partnership, and that keeps people entertained. Besides, if you have a successful partnership, it's self-sustaining.
-- Mick Jagger

#Drama #Successful #Two

I don't find it easy dealing with people with drug problems. It helps if you're all taking drugs, all the same drugs.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Drug #Helping

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.
-- Mick Jagger

#Song #War #Symphony

Everyone in the movie industry wants to win an Oscar. I don't think that's why you make movies. But winning an Oscar is not just about making a great movie, unfortunately. It's also having a good Oscar campaign.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Winning #Want

I would hate to say as a non-African-American person that it would be wrong for a black person to direct white people in a movie. Wouldn't that be awful of me to say that? The only sympathizing thing I might say for people that want to [grumble] is that a filmmaker should have an understanding for the place where the people you're portraying are coming from.
-- Mick Jagger

#Hate #White #People

I was never that interested in business, to be honest. I do the minimal amount of business as possible because I'm not actually interested in it as a thing. But some people are interested in it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Honest #Being Honest

Any performer is one person privately and then he's another person when he steps on the stage.
-- Mick Jagger

#Steps #Stage #Persons

Music should elevate you. You can be raised, or left stranded. You can't be raised all the time, in my experience. This might be a rare moment. You might just go up to that level but that's always good.
-- Mick Jagger

#Levels #Might #Rare Moments

Anyone taking ***** is thinking about taking ***** more than they're thinking about anything else. That's the general rule about most drugs.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #Drug #Heroin

The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.
-- Mick Jagger

#America #World #Dresses

It's a real buzz, even in front of 20 people, to make a complete fool of yourself. But people seemed to like it. And the thing is, if people started throwing tomatoes at me, I wouldn't have gone on with it.
-- Mick Jagger

#Real #People #Gone

Boys, as far as England was concerned, were always the hard core. And you just know the guys like it. They want to be you. Some might be attracted to you without knowing it.
-- Mick Jagger

#Boys #Knowing #Guy

Boys were a very essential part of rock & roll. The girls were more onlookers.
-- Mick Jagger

#Girl #Boys #Rocks

It's hard to believe that you did so many drugs for so long. That's what I find really hard. And didn't really consider it. It was eating and drinking and taking drugs and having sex. It was just part of life.
-- Mick Jagger

#Sex #Drinking #Believe

Country music... doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.
-- Mick Jagger

#Country #Roots #Way

I wasn't understanding enough about drug addition. No one seemed to know much about drug addiction. Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you.
-- Mick Jagger

#People #Addiction #Understanding

Always as a musician you must have one thing you do well.
-- Mick Jagger

#Musician #Wells

I think that people taking drugs occasionally are great. I think there's nothing wrong with it. But if you do it the whole time, you don't produce as good things as you could.
-- Mick Jagger

#Thinking #People #Drug

I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek.
-- Mick Jagger

#Country #Thinking #Tongue