People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you. It's very selfish, but it's understandable.
I'd rather be dead than singing "Satisfaction" when I'm forty-five.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a strong aversion to compromising artistic integrity for commercial success as one ages.
Mick Jagger's quote reflects the idea that maintaining authenticity and passion in one's career is more important than achieving commercial success, particularly within the music industry. He suggests that the idea of performing a song merely for its popularity or financial gain, especially in a future where he may not resonate with it, is undesirable and unacceptable. It emphasizes the value of staying true to oneself over time, rejecting conformist pressures to please others.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about artist integrity during a music industry panel.
More from Mick Jagger
All quotes βYou start out playing rock 'n' roll so you can have sex and do drugs, but you end up doing drugs so you can still play rock 'n' roll and have sex.
The new fashion is to talk about the most private parts of your life; other fashion is to repent of your excesses and to criticize the drugs that made you happy in the other times.
Thank you for leaving us alone but giving us enough attention to boost our egos.
As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.
I have never wanted to give up performing on stage, but one day the tours will be over.
Similar quotes
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
It is not theatre that is indispensable, but something quite different. To cross the frontiers between you and me.
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
My job as a performer is to make sure that whatever happens in a performance lives in somebody else, that it's memorable... If you forget tomorrow what you heard yesterday, there's really not much point in you having been there - or me, for that matter.
You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.
I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. That's why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.