Mick Jagger: Cover Boy for the Over-50 Set

He has survived the usual travails of stardom--a drug bust, failed marriages and a paternity suit--but this may be more than an aging rocker can bear: A British magazine for seniors, Saga, has put Mick Jagger on the cover of its September issue.

Granted, it is a 5-year-old, softly lit photograph of the Rolling Stones singer sans wrinkles and wearing a boyish blue and pink rugby shirt to highlight his eyes. But it makes the 58-year-old Jagger what one tabloid newspaper called a “pipe ‘n’ slippers pinup.”

In the cover story on the star, amid ads for recliners and retirement cottages, Jagger promotes “Enigma,” the film he has produced about the World War II experts who broke the Nazis’ military code--British heroes rather than the Americans portrayed in the Hollywood film “U-571.”

“Enigma” is set in 1943, the year Jagger was born, and is an ideal story for Saga, said editor Paul Bach. “A lot of our readers would have been involved with Enigma directly or indirectly,” Bach said in a telephone interview.

He said he thought the British media had “gone mad” over the Jagger feature in his magazine, which targets the over-50 set, adding, “Come on, he could have been on the cover eight years ago.”

But Jagger is on the cover during the summer 2001 news doldrums and Fleet Street is having a field day with headlines like “Sittin’ Jack Flash” and “The Pensioners’ Pinup.” The papers noted that Jagger would be eligible for many of Saga’s money-saving offers: 25% off the price of eyeglasses, half-price cruises from Portsmouth to Bilbao, Spain, and beat-the-queue tickets at Madame Tussaud’s with complimentary tea and biscuits.

While publicists for “Enigma” are said to have encouraged Garth Pearce, the freelance journalist who interviewed Jagger, to get the piece into Saga, Jagger’s press people reportedly have been dismayed by the attention drawn to Jagger’s age--and aging audience. Reached by mobile telephone, his spokesman, Bernard Doherty, said, “Can’t talk, I’m on the motorway,” and hung up. He did not return other calls.

Previous Saga covers have featured Robert Redford, former model Twiggy and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Jagger undoubtedly prefers the company he keeps in the society magazine Tatler, which last month put him at No. 7 on the list of top 100 party guests--up from 19 last year.

“Old snake hips may be nearly 60, but he still has pulling power,” the magazine said. And that clearly is the reason Jagger is on the cover; the magazine is about looking forward, Bach said, and with “Enigma,” “it’s all about to happen” for Jagger.

Maybe. “Enigma,” starring Kate Winslet, is the first production of Jagger’s movie company, Jagged Films. A premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this month drew cool reviews as a sedate, middle-aged kind of film. “Enigma” suffers from “inertia,” wrote the Times of London critic.

The Enigma machine was the main coding device used by the Germans during World War II. The British captured one from a U-boat, and, unbeknownst to the Nazis, a team of experts broke the code at a top-secret station in Bletchley Park, north of London, helping to cut short the war.

The film, based on the bestselling novel “Enigma” by Robert Harris, was scripted by Tom Stoppard and took six years to complete--longer than it took the Allies to win the war, one reviewer noted. Part of the problem, according to Jagger, was finding funding for a film deemed too British by Hollywood.

“We could not get American money to make this unless we changed it to an American story,” Jagger said in the article. “And how can you transplant this to somewhere like Philadelphia?”

In fact, in “U-571,” history was rewritten to attribute the capture of the Enigma to Americans. Lacking U.S. and British capital, the search for funding eventually led Jagged Films to Germany, where they were more successful. The film, to be released in Europe next month and in February in the U.S., is directed by Michael Apted, who also directed the last James Bond film, “The World Is Not Enough.”

“I believe in British films and British talent,” Jagger told Pearce. “We’ve had some of the best technicians and film crews around for years. We are not getting a crop of strong young actors coming through who are acceptable to Americans. I am not against having an American actor in any film, so long as they are good. Where it goes wrong is having to employ an American who is no good, just to keep the financiers happy.”

On the other hand, Jagger admitted in the article that he might never have gone into the film business with Jagged co-owner Victoria Pearman had he not been pushed by Hollywood friends.

“If I had been left to my own devices, it would never have happened. Although I am hard-working, I am also slightly lazy .... Eventually, I was sitting around Los Angeles, and one of these guys in the movie business offered me a deal. I thought, ‘It seems fated that I should get involved,”’ he said.

The leader of the rock group now dubbed “The Strolling Bones” did get involved--and got himself on the cover of Saga looking almost as young as his latest girlfriend, 23-year-old model Sophie Dahl.

“Still in Search of Satisfaction,” the Saga headline says, referring to Jagger’s film.

“A Good Light Gives Jagger Satisfaction,” said the Times headline, referring to the star’s youthful photograph.