Mick Jagger on SNL

Mick Jagger on SNL -- Mick Jagger was odd-looking fellow when he was thirty; at 70, he’s astoundingly hideous. But he seems a good sport and was pretty funny in skits written for him on Saturday Night Live (Saturday, May 19, 2012). Jagger has a broad and “honky” American accent (imitating an American he sounds a little like Mitt Romney) and, with his hair slicked back and begoggled, he does a good job simulating an archetypal American nerd. He also does an excellent swishy British homosexual . Jagger can still dance, although his moves are pretty repetitive these days – on the show, he performed several of his hits with Arcade Fire and the Foo Fighters. (The Foo Fighters, in particular, seemed starstruck to be performing with His Satanic Majesty and essentially opened their veins to support him – the metaphor is apt: they played “It’s only Rock and Roll but I like it” which famously makes this subjunctive statement: “If I could stick a pen in my heart/ Suicide right on the stage , words that are also portentous in light of the fact that Foo Fighters is comprised of remnants of Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana). Jagger also had a nice, if inconsequential, blues tune performed with Jeff Beck – the song was about the US presidential election and it’s always nice to hear Jeff Beck play the guitar. One of the skits was unwittingly poignant: Jagger appears as a minor executive employed by an American insurance company. He looks staid and bourgeois. With a couple of younger associates, he is drinking in a hotel lounge somewhere – he and his mates are attending some sort of joyless professional convention. It’s Karaoke night in the bar and people get up to lip-synch to old Rolling Stones songs. A fat man and a black dude perform to a couple of well-known sixties tunes – Gimme Shelter and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The younger people urge Jagger’s character to take the stage and try singing along with one of those songs. Jagger bespectacled and proper insurance actuary says that he is too shy. His comrades are drunk and fulsome in their praise for the Karaoke singers mimicking Jagger’s prance and hip-wiggling. They shout at the various ersatz Jaggers: “You’re better than the original.” It’s closing and everyone leaves the bar. The real Mick Jagger sits alone in a spotlight and forlornly mumbles the words to “Satisfaction.” We want to see him get up and blow the place away with his strut and his swagger. But he doesn’t. We think: he’s the real Mick Jagger, he should come out of hiding and perform. But no – the real Mick Jagger was thirty years old. And that’s the point: even Mick Jagger isn’t Mick Jagger any more.