As early as 1968, Mick Jagger was trying to make moves into the world of cinema.
Already the ultimate rock and roll frontman, he clearly fancied the idea of being the king of the screen too. From starring in somewhat controversial flicks to launching his own production company, he had a lot of ideas, but not all of them came through.
Jagger’s filmography begins with a bang. In 1968, he starred in Performance, a crime drama that saw him acting alongside Anita Pallenberg, the Italian-German actor who had previously been with Brian Jones but had recently begun dating Jagger’s other bandmate, Keith Richards. That was already a tense and tricky situation, especially given that it had caused Jones and Richards to majorly fall out. So, as Jagger and Pallenberg needed to get into some intense sexual scenes, the rumour mill naturally spiralled that an affair was underway.
It was a chaotic way to begin, but it didn’t put him off. However, film never truly became Jagger’s goal, and his engagement with that whole world was pretty sporadic. But when he wanted something, he really went at it, like in 1975, when he wanted to play Frank N Furter in the movie adaptation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reportedly being very unhappy when he lost out to Tim Curry.
There were a fair few near misses like that, though. When Alejandro Jodorowsky was going to adapt Dune, he wanted Jagger to star, but it was never made. The singer was almost a Werner Herzog star, but due to the director’s signature delays, Jagger had to drop out of Fitzcarraldo.
Instead, when his acting dreams never quite took off, Jagger settled for a life of making appearances. You can catch him walking onto several projects or appearing as himself for a little rock and roll cameo. Or, you can spot his name in the credits as a sly producer after he learnt that those who can’t do, can help make it happen.
In 1991, Jagger founded his production company, Jagged Films. Once again, it was built on big dreams but never quite reached those heights, as it mostly made Stones documentaries. But there was one point where a huge collaboration was in the pipeline, as the frontman was seemingly working with Martin Scorsese on an idea.
“The thing about film projects is, whereas you work on a music project and it will just happen, more or less,” Jagger once said, shy about sharing updates. “There’s not so much money, not so much of a committee, the problem with movies is that you have to have to have a lot of projects, because they come together, they fall apart, the rights revert to someone else, they get too expensive, all kinds of things”.
Then, in 2001, he shared this one: “I have two things which vaguely feature the music business, one is called The Long Play, which I’ve written with Martin Scorsese”.
He explained how it was his idea against the backdrop of the music industry: “Just how two guys in New York were brought up in the independent record business, what happens to them over 30 years, how the music industry changes, and how the world changes as seen through that microcosm of the music business.”
Jagger really wanted Martin Scorsese to direct it, but then it was never heard of again, or not in that form.
Did Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese’s idea get made?
The Long Play never came out, but Vinyl did.
While Jagger’s original idea, which he spoke of back then, seemed to be a movie, the premise sounds awfully familiar to the TV show that he and Scorsese collaborated on in 2016. Vinyl follows a 1970s record producer struggling with the way the music world was changing. As episode one of the series credits Jagger as writing the story, it’s pretty safe to assume that this is what that idea became.
Knowing how long-running this idea was only makes the fate of Vinyl worse. The TV show was great, starring a powerful cast of big names and new upstarters. However, randomly, even with rave reviews, it was cancelled after only one season. Scorsese bore it all on his shoulders, claiming that he was heartbroken over the plug being pulled and thought that had he been more involved and directed every episode, not just the one he and Jagger wrote to start it off, perhaps it would have been saved.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to know that in some way, Jagger’s old idea did find a home, even if it was only as a pilot episode to a TV show that slipped from his control.