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Life’s a Performance, You Need a Good Character
Day 26, Thursday 12th April 2018
Mick Jagger swaggered and jabbered about the black hat shenanigans that he and his bandmates engaged in, when developing the character of the Rolling Stones.
As he talked, there was a cocksure allure that emanated from him. It’s very seductive, when someone speaks with such mischievous confidence in their pure anti-ness. The spiky sense of rebellion is enchanting, it’s almost romantic.
When the Rolling Stones started out, they were the anti-Beatles. In the beautifully candid rock n roll documentary Crossfire Hurricane, they talk of films which feature good guys and bad guys, the white hats and the black hats. The Beatles were unreserved good guys, so the Stones took the role of bad guys, the black hat wearers who stood at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. They embraced this position and played up to it.
Jagger is an energetic, electric performer, yet the outrageous bad-guy attitude which followed the Stones in their early years was a characterisation. Learning that these Gods of rock n roll were putting on an act made me feel a bit cheated, which also shows how naive I can be. Rock and roll is theatre, it’s an imperial stage show created for the excitement of the mob. To assume the lead role of this magnificent display is…
