Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones have long been regarded as one of the best duos in music history. Not only have the two Dartford natives written a long list of classic songs in their time, but they backed up their musical mastery with unrelenting hedonism in their heyday.
The musicians have seen and done it all in their 60 years in the sun. As both are survivors of the generation in which sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll was the spirit of the day, their insights are quickly becoming a rare currency.
Despite Jagger and Richards being one of the greatest musical duos, second only to The Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they’ve had their fair share of disputes. It can be argued that tough times are necessary to strengthen the bonds of any relationship worth its salt, so there’s no wonder that Jagger and Richards remain so close.
Perhaps the most notorious impasse the two have reached came via Keith Richards. At one point in his revealing 2010 memoir, Life, he quipped about the size of Jagger’s manhood, and understandably, this did not go down well with his old partner in crime.
Richards’ comments come in a section where the guitarist describes his old girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, getting tired of having an affair with The Rolling Stones frontman. Clearly, there were many built-up emotions here that the guitarist was letting off. “The idea of status quo to Anita, in those days, was verboten. Everything must change. And we’re not married, we’re free, whatever. You’re free as long as you let me know what’s going on,” Richards wrote. “Anyway, she had no fun with his tiny todger. I know he’s got an enormous pair of balls, but it doesn’t quite fill the gap, does it?”
This wasn’t the only thing that angered Jagger. Elsewhere in Life, Richards said that their relationship had strained in the early 1980s because Jagger was becoming “unbearable”. He then disclosed the handful of derogatory nicknames he had for the vocalist at the time: “It was the beginning of the Eighties when Mick started to become unbearable. That’s when he became Brenda, or Her Majesty, or just Madam.”
Despite getting his thoughts off his chest after so many years, in 2012, Richards made it clear that he holds deep “regret” about insulting his old friend in Life. “[Mick] and I have had conversations over the last year of a kind we have not had for an extremely long time, and that has been incredibly important to me,” he explained in a documentary about the band’s 50th anniversary. “As far as the book goes, it was my story, and it was very raw, as I meant it to be, but I know that some parts of it and some of the publicity really offended Mick, and I regret that.”
The debacle would not pass without Jagger having his say on the matter. In the same documentary, he noted that whilst there was once palpable friction between him and his old friend, he was glad that Life allowed them to smooth things over. “Looking back at any career, you are bound to recall both the highs and the lows,” Jagger expressed. “In the 1980s, for instance, Keith and I were not communicating very well. I got very involved with the business side of the Stones, mainly because I felt no one else was interested, but it’s plain now from the book that Keith felt excluded, which is a pity.”
Firmly closing the book on the past, the frontman said, “Time, I reckon, to move on.”
