OLD ST. MICK

Steve Pond’s review of Mick Jagger’s latest album is quite amusing. He complains that Jagger is prancing around these days “as if his mere presence is enough to make us care about music in which he puts nothing on the line.” What does Pond think? This is still the ‘60s?

Jagger doesn’t have to put anything on the line anymore. He’s already emerged from a quarter-century-long cultural revolution as the most resilient character among his contemporaries. Lennon, Morrison, Presley or Hendrix couldn’t hang as long as the “genuinely angry, nasty edge” to their music music would have indicated.

Jagger alone has endured, and the last thing he wants right now is another revolution. He’s already established himself as the indisputable lord of popular culture, and in that capacity he’s more concerned with keeping the standard alive rather than breaking it.

Pond is naive. He doesn’t seem to realize that his job has been made possible by the longevity of Jagger’s prodigious career. He doesn’t know that, in essence, he works for Mick Jagger.

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