‘The Stones are a great group and I love them. I love what they do. But when I look at their history, they always did what the Beatles did, a year later. When we started writing our own songs, you started to see everyone else doing that. The Stones had always been a blues cover band, but then they realised they had to write their own. You had Sgt. Pepper and then Satanic Majesties; our initial tour of America and then, six months later, the Stones tour of America. Even people who don’t admit to it, and who found their roots in other types of music, couldn’t help but be influenced by the success of the Beatles.’
Sir Paul McCartney
‘I liked the Beatles but I wasn’t mad on the Stones. I always thought they were a slight rip-off of Chuck Berry and some of the old blues people, and they never seemed to change. If people compare me to Jagger and the Stones I would be the one to be put down … I’ve been far more progressive than any of them.’
Sir Cliff Richard
‘It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He’s pathetic. It’s like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go on stage and look young. I have great respect for the Stones, but they would have been better if they had thrown Keith out fifteen years ago.’
Sir Elton John
‘The reality is that I’m seventy-two now. I still have hair on my head but a lot more on my back. You want to quit and get out while the iron is hot and getting is good. I don’t wanna be up on stage at seventy-five or eighty, and that’s because we’re the hardest working band in show business. I had to wear forty pounds of armor, eight-inch platform heels, wear more makeup and higher heels than any female you know, spit fire, and fly through the air. I mean, I would have been smarter to be in the Stones playing the guitar, wearing a T-shirt and sneakers, and never having to break a sweat. Other than Jagger, of course. So, we are getting out while the getting is good, the health is good, we’re rocking it, and we’re doing great. Go out when you’re on top instead of when you’re a sorry mess afterward.’
Gene Simmons, KISS
‘Mick Jagger can’t even make a successful solo album, and the Stones are the biggest rock group that ever was.’
Don Henley
‘My first experience [with him] was when Mick Jagger walked in the dressing room without knocking, and he says, “I love how you girls dance.” Often he would come into the dressing room, but we were always prepared because we never knew when he was coming in, but that’s how Mick is.’
Tina Turner
‘The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it … you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one’s ever done it better.’
Bob Dylan
‘I got on great with the Rolling Stones. This surprised everyone, including me, because I was “shy Pat” and here I was hanging out with these white rock’n’rollers. And in South Central LA, black girls and white guys definitely did not hang out and party together! While they spoke English here (in UK), it was a different kind of English to what we spoke. And I found the culture completely different. I went from the civil rights revolution in the US to the rock’n’roll revolution in England.’
P.P. Arnold
‘I fell asleep at night with dreams of rock’n’roll glory in my head. Here’s how one would go: the Stones have a gig at Asbury Park’s Convention Hall but Mick Jagger gets sick. It’s a show they’ve got to make, they need a replacement, but who can replace Mick? Suddenly, a young hero rises, a local kid right out of the audience. He can “front”: he’s got the voice, the look, the moves, no acne and he plays a hell of a guitar. The band clicks, Keith is smiling, and suddenly, the Stones aren’t in such a rush to get Mick out of his sickbed. How does it end? Always the same … the crowd goes wild.’
Bruce Springsteen
‘There were lots of things I could have done at the age of nineteen that would have been more healthy than becoming Mick Jagger’s inamorata. In the end, it doesn’t matter that hearts got broken and that we sweated blood. Maybe the most you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs.’
Marianne Faithfull
‘While Keith was away I’d be starting to get off heroin, really trying, but then he’d return and he’d get me on it just as bad as before. People who used to be friends began to get very bitchy toward me. Keith had this entourage of hangers-on who were always around the house, came for a weekend, stayed on for weeks and months, always a house full of freeloading sycophants. Yes, Keith, anything you say, Keith, no private life, no time to talk, the suppliers bringing us the heroin, but that’s all we had in common.’
Anita Pallenberg
‘Mick was obsessed with the idea of gold diggers. He sees all women as tarts.’
Bianca Jagger
‘Mick Jagger and I just really liked each other a lot. We talked all night. We had the same views on nuclear disarmament.’
Jerry Hall
‘I’m sorry but in the early 1970s Led Zeppelin wiped their asses with the Rolling Stones. And by 1977 and 1978 Queen would have wiped their asses with the Rolling Stones, too.’
Neal Preston, rock photographer
‘Mick Jagger? Mean with money. Still is.’
David Bailey
‘The matter of “Would You Let Your Daughter Go With a Rolling Stone?” Did I first say it? No, but I heard someone say it and I repeated it and made it work. It had just been a part of someone else’s conversation. I heard it and pushed it into a headline. I had no idea that it would be a byline for life.’
Andrew Loog Oldham
‘Mick Jagger’s male-to-male sexual attractiveness was a fundamental part of the Rolling Stones’ early success. So was Brian Epstein’s gayness on the way the Beatles were presented and sold. From the seventies onwards, many artists gained promotional benefits from outing themselves.’
Simon Napier-Bell
‘I like it on the road. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t go out there, I’d go mad.’
Mick Jagger
‘Mick’s attitude to women is that they are basically cattle. They are goods. That is his basic attitude … I find it quite easy to detach myself from Mick’s private life, but then it’s ludicrous because it’s not private at all. He’s intent on being Casanova or Don Juan. He’s always looking for it which is cruel to his loved ones, but he has always been like that.’
Keith Richards
‘On tour we all get down but Mick can get down lower than most.’
Keith Richards
‘When Mick finds out who he is – that will probably be the end of the Rolling Stones.’
Ian Stewart
‘The original Rolling Stones band was so incredible, due in great part to Brian Jones. It was initially his band, after all. He was a visionary and creative. I hung out with him from time to time, and one of our favourite things to do was go to eat Indian food. One of the last times I saw him was during the Beggars Banquet sessions; we were sitting in a circle on the floor. Keith Richards on my right with an acoustic guitar, Charlie Watts on my left with a snare drum in a briefcase. Opposite me was Brian. We were beating on large Moroccan drums, laying down the basic track for ‘Street Fighting Man’.
Dave Mason, co-founder, Traffic
‘He ran out of runway.’
John Lennon on Brian Jones