You can’t always get what you want, according to the Rolling Stones song, and it seems frontman Mick Jagger has taken the lyrics to heart after hinting the band’s back catalogue might go to charity instead of leaving it to his children “who don’t need it”.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Jagger said he had no plans to sell the band’s post-1971 catalogue, suggesting it could go to charity instead. He said: “The children don’t need $500m to live well. Come on.”
Jagger, 80, told the journal that the back catalogue may go to charity one day. “You maybe do some good in the world,” he added.
Jagger has eight children. The oldest is 52 and the youngest is six. The oldest, Karis, now 52, was born in 1970 with the actor Marsha Hunt. His second daughter, Jade, 51, was born the year after with ex-wife Bianca Jagger.
Jagger had four children with actor Jerry Hall, daughters Elizabeth, 39, and Georgia May, 31, as well as sons James, 38, and Gabriel, 25. In 1999, Lucas, 24, was born while in a relationship with model Luciana Gimenez Morad. In 2016 he had his youngest child, Deveraux, with choreographer and former ballerina Melanie Hamrick.
In the wide-reaching interview Jagger also talked about how he recognised similarities in ownership issues Taylor Swift had with her record label and the early Stones music – to this day the band still don’t own the copyright to some of their biggest hits.
“The industry was so nascent, it didn’t have the support and the amount of people that are on tap to be able to advise you as they do now,” Jagger told the Wall Street Journal. “But you know, it still happens. I mean, look what happened to Taylor Swift! I don’t really know the ins and outs of it, but she obviously wasn’t happy.”
He also touched on how the Rolling Stones brand would outlive the band.
“You can have a posthumous business now, can’t you? You can have a posthumous tour,” he said. “The technology has really moved on since the Abba thing [the “Voyage” virtual show].”
Earlier this month, the band announced their first new album of original material since 2005, titled Hackney Diamonds. The band teased their appearance at the Hackney Empire theatre with an advert in local newspaper the Hackney Gazette. Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood announced the album in a press conference at the theatre in east London, in conversation with US talkshow host – and frequent Jagger impersonator – Jimmy Fallon.
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“I don’t want to be big-headed,” Jagger said, “but we wouldn’t have put this record out if we hadn’t really liked it.”
The album, which is released on 20 October, is set to feature a number of high-profile guest stars including Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder and former Stones bassist Bill Wyman. Reviews of the album are embargoed but the Guardian music team, which was given an early listen of the album, said the energy is often high, with one blisteringly paced rock’n’roll song joined by plenty of others with that typical high-tempo Stones strut, including one with a disco bassline. There are also pared-back blues numbers, bucolic country-rockers and lighters-aloft pop-rock ballads.
The album will be the first since the death of Charlie Watts, who died in August 2021, although he will feature on two of the tracks from earlier studio recordings.
Jagger said the band have another album of songs still to release, which is not yet completed: “I have to finish them. But we got three-quarters of it done.”
