Mick Jagger isn’t someone who needs to worry about stage performance. He could probably sneeze in the general direction of a stage and still manage to cool as hell if he wanted to. But what happens when an act is so good that it has the Stones’ frontman shaking in his boots?
It’s certainly no tall order for any casual performer to accomplish. Jagger normally has his greatest dance moves down to a science at this point, and no matter what anyone has to say about his voice, you can’t deny that he puts in 100% every single time he performs. The man is practically running the musical equivalent of a marathon in terms of breath control, so it’s not like Keith Richards has to do anything other than look like one of the most badass zombies anyone has ever seen.
But Jagger didn’t get there without some practice. As with all blues artists, Jagger had a wealth of guitarists to look up to for stage presence, like Muddy Waters, but Howlin’ Wolf was among the first major blues singers to go back to. Wolf had that kind of pain in his soul, and whenever he opened that mouth of his, all the grit and gravel inside could have easily given Jagger a run for his money any day of the week. Then again, rock and roll isn’t far away from R&B, either.
Compared to the wild dance moves that Jagger could do on his best day, a lot of what he was doing could have been adapted secondhand from Tina Turner. Chuck Berry was the father of rock and roll, but there was no question Turner was the godmother, complete with the kind of dance moves that Jagger could have easily stolen for himself once she stormed through England for the first time.
If you’re even thinking about stage performance and try to put your own spin on it, you’re going to be copying James Brown without realising. Brown has been called many things throughout his career, but lazy ain’t one of them, and the amount that he would sweat during his concert was enough to make anyone else think that they could never show their face onstage next to him.
And according to Gene Simmons, Jagger wasn’t exempt from that rule when he saw Brown on TV, saying, “The Stones were closing the show, and while James Brown was on stage, there was a close-up of Mick Jagger watching him and biting his nails. James Brown was just killing it, like nobody I’ve ever seen. It was astonishing how he moved, the way he was contorting his body.” But what’s even scarier is how much Brown probably held back when he was on camera.
From the sounds of Live at the Apollo alone, Brown could work a crowd like no one else, and while Jagger could hang with the best that rock had to offer, there was no reason to believe anyone was giving Brown a run for his money. Elvis Presley showed that rock and roll kids could have moves, but a world where James Brown gets upstaged is probably the same universe where Snoop Dogg doesn’t smoke weed or Noel Gallagher despises The Beatles.
Since day one, Brown was synonymous with his live performances, and even if he has passed on, there’s still a good chance that no one ever will. There are his musical children that have aspired to excellence as well, like Michael Jackson and Prince, but looking at him going through a song like ‘I Don’t Mind’, Jagger may as well have looked like a prim and proper schoolboy next to him.