So about all those solos. I still maintain She’s the Boss was pretty good. Not great, but to me still better than other ‘ha-ha suckers I’m going solo’ projects released the same year by Sting, Phil Collins, Freddie Mercury and Roger Daltrey. I just found out (via Keith Richards and his Life) that Jagger had secretly piggybacked an agreement for x solo records onto The Stones’ record contract and made plans to tour and record without telling anybody. A dick move by any standards, made worse by cavalier statements to the press calling The Stones ‘a millstone’. Richards, for one, can barely contain his glee that Jagger’s little records failed to launch him into a solo career far surpassing anything he’d achieved before. That may have had less to do with the quality of the records, which aren’t any worse, like I’ve just said, than anybody else’s such attempts. You just can’t surpass being in The World’s Greatest Rock’n'Roll Band, there’s nowhere left to go but back down. There’s a glass ceiling on how big of a star you can be, and Mick Jagger was already a star of the biggest possible magnitude. Sure, Phil Collins’ solo career far surpassed the achievements of Genesis (not in quality, obviously) because Genesis never sold very many records. Jagger may have pulled it off if he’d gone solo in 1968, but by the time he did try, his image was just too deeply entrenched to be changed much. How much you enjoy the work itself depends entirely on whether you were a Mick Jagger fan in the first place, and what exactly it was you were getting out of The Rolling Stones. If half the joy of The Stones was watching Mick prance around and listening to his voice and perving out over his physique, then you’ll probably dig those same things in a slightly different context. If you’re more interested in the musicianship and raw energy of the band as a whole, or a guitar-worshiper who loves Keith Richards more, then you’ll agree with Keith’s assessments and stay far, far away. It’s up to you, really.
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