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The Mick Jagger Interview
QUESTION: Mick, when did you first become aware of the Rutles?
MICK: I suppose when we were living in Edith Grove in London and
we were living in squalor and we didn't have any money and there were
the Rutles on the TV with girls chasing them and we thought this can't
be that difficult, so we thought we'd have a go ourselves.
QUESTION: When did you actually meet the Rutles as individuals?
MICK: The first time I met the Rutles they all came down to see
us at Richmond and we had just completed a number and suddenly they
were standing there in their black suits, they'd just come off a
TV show and they were just sort of checking out the opposition, and
then they introduced themselves you know: Dirk, Stig, Nasty, and
Barry. They'd heard about us you know cos for a while we were the
South's answer to the Rutles.
QUESTION: Were you billed as that?
MICK: We were billed as that, yes. When we got up to Birmingham
it'd say "London's answer to the Rutles".
QUESTION: Were they trying to sell you songs at that stage?
MICK: A bit later on they did, yeh. The one for that was Dirk
really. He was a real hustler for the songs. Any old slag he'd sell
a song to. I remember they came down once and we were trying to
rehearse and they said do you wanna song and we said "yeh". We were
always really open to songs cos we didn't write our own and the Rutles
were always well known for their hit-making potential ability. So
they ran around to the corner to the pub to write this song and came
back with it and played it to us and it was horrible. So, we never
bothered to record it. I used to see them a lot then. The Rutles
in London, particularly Nasty. Nasty and I got on well. Barry used
to get a bit drunk in nightclubs you know and start punching out the
Bigamy Sisters.
QUESTION: Were you at Che Stadium?
MICK: Yeh, I was at Che Stadium with the Rutles. That was the first
big outdoor concert by a rock band, the Rutles at Che Stadium, so it
was an exciting event. I even rented a helicopter for it. Came in,
zooming over the crowd, never seen a crowd as big as that for a rock
concert before, ran in and met them before they went on. I think they
were nervous, you know, in front of all those people, but the thing I
remembered most about is running out in the middle of this field and
you couldn't see em and they were just miles away. Is it really
the Rutles? It might be somebody else. And there was Barry on this
eighteen foot drum riser swaying in the wind. I thought it was going
to fall over. We had a good party afterwards though.
QUESTION: Did you hear much?
MICK: No. Nothing at all. You couldn't hear anything.
QUESTION: How long did they play?
MICK: About twenty minutes and that was it, off, helicopter, back to
the Warwick Hotel, two birds each.
QUESTION: Did you know leggy well?
MICK: Oh yeh, Leggy, yeh you kidding. Leggy got around a bit you
know. I think he was a very big influence on them. He was like one of
those old time managers you know, do this, do that, take all the
responsibility off your shoulders: you wanna Rolls Royce? I'll buy you
one, what color do you want it, what color do you want it painted?
And that was alright until he started going off with the bullfighters,
and then I think they got a bit disenchanted with him and he didn't
know where to go in his life and they wanted to control themselves, you
know.
QUESTION: You went to Bognor with them?
MICK: Yeh, the Bognor thing was really funny. "The Bognor Express"
they called it in the newspapers, "Aboard the Bognor Express". We all
got on the train together and someone was very late, one of the girls,
they're always late. Nasty thought we were trying to get on the Rutles
mystical bandwagon which wasn't true at all. We were just as eager to
find out what was going on at this board-tapping thing at Bognor as
anybody. Anyway, we had a bit of board-tapping and nothing much happened,
we didn't reach anywhere much and we had to spend the night there in a
youth-hostel type place I remember I was with Marianne Faithful and we
only had single beds in the hotel so Marianne put the beds together so
we could sleep together on the floor and Nasty came in and said "Oh
Mick, all you think about is fucking sex, man. We're down here for
board-tapping not sex." It was you kind of a funny weekend that, and
then of course at the end of it we found out that Leggy had gone off to
Australia which kind of put the mockers on.
QUESTION: Did Keith like the Rutles?
MICK: Yeh, I think Keith liked the Rutles songs from the beginning.
It influenced him a lot more than it did me. I mean, I never used to
like them very much you know, they were to me a bit sort of too "dee dee
dee dee dee dee", but Keith liked that.
QUESTION: Why do you think the Rutles broke up?
MICK: Why do I think they did? Why did the Rutles break up? Women.
Just women getting in the way. Cherchez la femme you know.
QUESTION: Do you think they'll ever get back together again?
MICK: I hope not.
This page created July 1, 1996.
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